Media Standards Trust

‘The coverage [of Muslims in the UK press] is likely to provoke and increase feelings of insecurity’ a report claimed last week. ‘Facts are frequently distorted, exaggerated or oversimplified… The tone of language is frequently emotive, immoderate, alarmist’. Is media coverage giving rise to Islamophobia? If so, what can be done to change that?

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“Islam is profoundly different from and a threat to the west”

In 2006 the Greater London Authority commissioned a report into media coverage of Muslims and Islam. It took almost a year to complete, from May 2006 – April 2007 (and another 7 months to publish) and included content analysis, interviews and a survey of opinion poll research.

Its conclusions are starkly pessimistic. So negative is the vast majority of coverage, the report claims, that it is:

-  “Likely to provoke and increase feelings of insecurity, suspicion and anxiety amongst non-Muslims;

- Likely to provoke feelings of insecurity, vulnerability and alienation amongst Muslims;

- Unlikely to help diminish levels of hate crime and acts of unlawful discrimination;

- Unlikely to contribute to informed discussion and debate amongst Muslims and non-Muslims”

Ken Livingstone sums up the findings by suggesting the vast majority of coverage puts forward the view that ““Islam is profoundly different from and a threat to the west”.

 

What evidence is there for prejudice & its influence?

Some of the report’s evidence of prejudice comes from the analysis of articles published one week back in May 2006. Based on 352 articles about Islam, 91% were said to be negative, 5% neutral and 4% positive.

The report also points to a number of specific stories about ‘political correctness gone mad’ as direct evidence of falsification / distortion. The alleged banning of piggy banks in a building society, for example, because they were offensive to Muslims (found to have not foundation). And the supposed banning of Christmas by a local council (also not found to be true).

To prove that media coverage is having an influence on attitudes, the report quotes a UK survey which found that ‘74 per cent of Britons… claim that they know “nothing or next to nothing about Islam” (of whom 64 per cent claim that what they do know about Islam and Muslims is gained through the media)’.

It also references some vitriolic responses to the stories cited above, left as comments on newspaper websites.

 

What does the report recommend?

The recommendations of the report are split into:

- Those which involve newspapers just behaving more responsibly (amending their codes of professional conduct, employing more Muslims in the newsroom);

- Those which put pressure on other bodies to police negative media coverage (such as the Commission for Equality and Human Rights, and the Department for Communities and Local Government, as well as the Press Complaints Commission);

- And a plea to educational establishments to develop ‘critical media literacy’ and ‘religious literacy’.

‘If they are to contribute constructively to the debate’ the report tells newspapers, ‘the mainstream media must put their own house in order’.

Commenting on the report Angela Phillips agreed that ‘journalists right across the press, whether on liberal newspapers or more conservative ones, have a lot of thinking to do about issues of representation’.

 

Not taken seriously?

Despite being launched by Ken Livingstone himself, neither the press nor broadcasters appear to have taken the report seriously.

There were very few news articles about its publications, and only a handful of editorials (including - 'You couldn't make it up', 'Muslims and the media' on the Guardian's Comment is Free).

 

Why not?

Was the report ignored because news organisations did not find it credible?

Is it realistic, for example to call for more positive stories of Muslims when the overwhelming number of news stories about most subjects printed in the papers are ‘negative’?

Is the aim of the report, as John Ware claimed in the Sunday Telegraph, " to put political Islam beyond the scope of media inquiry"?

Was it not thought to be ‘newsworthy’ enough?

Have the issues raised in this report fallen out of the public eye? Have news organisations already taken action to address any of the problems identified?

Were its conclusions too pessimistic and its recommendations too unrealistic?

Is it enough to call for newspapers to ‘behave better’?

Did the press ignore it because it was critical of their behaviour?

 

Is the press promoting Islamophobia? And if so, what can be done about it?

 

Links

'The search for common ground: Muslims, non-Muslims and the UK media' GLA Report, November 2007

The recommendations made in The search for a common ground are dismayingly similar to many of those made in our Islamophobia report: in short, the media must become more reflexive where racist or racialised reporting of ethnic minorities is concerned. We are therefore alarmed at the media’s response to The search for a common ground; it is disheartening to see that the arguments we made 10 years ago still need to be reiterated, and are still ignored. There is compelling evidence that there is a race bias in reporting, and many journalists would agree with this. The standard response, however, is one of categorical denial: there is no racism in the media, and attempts to suggest otherwise amount to an assault on freedom of speech.
It is not entirely clear to us why the media is so reluctant to engage with and think about criticism. It is possible that the tone of the critique often levelled at the media too relentlessly and unfairly singles them out as the main culprit. Indeed, the media is an easy target, and other social elite institutions are quite capable of arousing moral panics without the direct input of journalists. As Robert Reiner reminds us: “Changes in media representations do not come fully formed from another planet and produce changes in behaviour patterns ex nihilo. They are themselves likely to reflect on-going changes in social perceptions and practices.” This argument, however, is often taken to the extreme by journalists, who insist that they are merely reflecting public opinion. This position is as untenable as singling the media out for criticism. The media is not the source of the problem, but it is certainly part of it, and must therefore be part of the solution. The media does have an immense influence on the development of social and ideological perceptions and practices of not only its audience, but other elite institutions and influential social actors as well, such as politicians and corporations. This is important, because media events can have an extensive effect on political rhetoric and development of policy.
Interestingly, this much was acknowledged 36 years ago. In a Runnymede publication entitled Race and the Press, published in 1971, the editors of four major British newspapers reflected on the relationship between the print media and race relations in Britain. By the evident standards of 2007, the four editors were notably reflexive and willing to engage in a constructive dialogue with critical voices. Their basic premise was that Freedom of Speech demands responsibilities as well as bestowing rights. There is no reason why this should not be true today.

I believe the press is promoting islamophobia. Since 911, almost every week there is a documentary on tv or an article in the press trying to demystify Islam or showing Islam with the oppression slant on things. Plus when there is a debate on tv about an issue around the veil or terrorists they use the loveable 'moderate muslims' - you know the muslims that are pleasing to the eye and unfortunately more often then not these so called representatives have no real idea of true islam and misconstrue things.

It's funny how now these days if muslims are mentioned in the press the word "moderate" has to be used in front of muslim inferring that if the word "muslim" was used alone it would mean something else or infer they are terrorists. Terrorists are terrorists. They are criminals. When a crime is reported in the press are they named by their religion. Whenever a crime or incident involving a muslim happens their religion is mentioned irrespective of whether or not the perpetrators has used Islam for their so called motivation. The billboards used to publicise Britz were inciteful, brandishing words "Whose Side Are You On?" Being a British muslim I knew what that programme would be about and chose not to watch it, as I'm angry at how muslims are portrayed in dramas and how the media get it so wrong.

If the press is the only source of knowledge for the some people to understand anything about muslims of course it will increase feelings of insecurity. Unless they have contact with muslims themselves how will ignorance ever be overcome. The press promoting islamphobia decreases integration from both sides and perpetuates this hysteria about muslims.

Muslims have positively contributed so much to the U.K and the world but being nice about muslims in the press is not "pc".

I have just completed a year of research into housing services for BME communities and have come to realize that it is people’s “lack of information about Islam” that is a big problem and helps the spread of Islamaphobia. There is fear about Islam and therefore a reluctance to engage with Muslim neighbours.

I would suggest that media students are given a good grounding in religions of the communities especially Islam as this is most predominant. They should also receive, as part of their education, information about how the media adversely affects community cohesion which the Government says it is trying hard to improve.

The BBC magazine piece 'Muslims are funny, too' feels uncomfortable from my wet-liberal perspective.

I'm constantly frustrated at the simplistic portrayal of Muslims in the media. Whether it's the character on Skins who only seems happy when he's compromising his beliefs or the characters in Britz who were desperately stereotypical. It's unsurprising that, in such a climate, possible role models like Amir Khan don't want to make a great feature of their beliefs.

Whilst it is true that none of these problems are unique to the portrayal of Islam or Muslims (are Catholics any better portrayed) the need for the media to get this one right is much greater.

If anything ever demonstrated the correctness of the analyses presented in The Search for Common Ground (on which I worked as a consultant) it is the ill-informed, knee-jerk hostility shown to it, even before publication, in sections of the British press – a pleasing irony of which the authors of these pieces appear to be blissfully unaware.

The report has, quite simply, recommended that news organisations should employ more Muslims (along with other minorities) so that their workforces are more representative of the society on which they report; that news concerning Islam and Muslims should – like all news, of course – be accurate; and that when reporting on sensitive and difficult subjects, such as those involving members of Britain’s minority communities, those working within news organisations should at least reflect on the possible consequences of their actions. Not a great deal to ask, one might think.

But apparently it is. However, rather than bother to engage critically with the substance of the report, its critics such as Nick Cohen and John Ware have merely looked ‘behind’ it, discovered (entirely erroneously as it happens) bogeyman-of-the-moment the MCB, and, armed with this apparently killer ‘fact’, simply dismissed the whole thing out of hand as irredeemably biased. Quite bizarrely, Inayat Bungawala of the MCB has been repeatedly fingered as the author of the chapter on the highly controversial John Ware Panorama episode ‘A Question of Leadership’ (21 August 2005), when, as is clearly acknowledged in a footnote, the author is in fact me. If nothing else, this certainly helps to prove the report’s contention that when newspapers deal with stories concerning Muslims and Islam, normal journalistic standards of accuracy are simply thrown out of the window.

Of course, it’s absolutely compulsory that those who have the temerity to suggest that the media might try to report more accurately, or more sensitively, or, God forbid, more responsibly, must be presented as would-be commissars and censors. So, bang on cue, up pops the hardly disinterested John Ware in the Sunday Telegraph,to claim that the report’s call for more community-sensitive reporting about multi-culturalism and British Muslim identities, reporting which might help to foster a much-needed sense of common ground ‘suggests that the aim of the “experts” is to put political Islam beyond the scope of media enquiry’. The piece once again helps to prove how correct was Will Hutton when he wrote in the Observer, 17 August 2003, that ‘Britain’s least accountable and self-critical institutions have become the media – and the way they operate is beginning to damage rather than protect the society of which they are a part’.

However, freedom from censorship (which I strongly support, pace Ware) is not the same thing as freedom from censure (which is what the report represents). But media freedom also brings with it certain responsibilities; indeed, as I point out in the recently published Freedom of the Word (Seagull Books/Index on Censorship 2007), media freedom in modern societies is largely premised on the idea that the media play a key role in the democratic process.

Sadly, The Search for Common Ground shows all too clearly how, when it comes to representing Muslims and Islam, the media all too frequently fails the democratic test. Inaccurate reporting, distortion, ill-informed commentary, the further marginalisation of already marginalised voices – these are all so common as to be routine across vast swathes of newsprint, and are now, as demonstrated by Ware’s Panorama episode, beginning to infect broadcasting as well. If an increasing number of people, and by no means simply Muslims, think (quite wrongly, in my view) that media freedom is no longer worth defending, the media should look to themselves for the reasons, and not make wild accusations about their critics, an increasingly numerous and well informed band.