Notes & Quotes
We categorised all the stories in our sample by
what we call a ‘news hook’. This refers to the main focus of the story or the
element that makes it newsworthy. The three most common ‘news hooks’ for
stories about British Muslims accounted for more than two thirds of stories.
These were:
• Terrorism or the war on terror, accounting for
36% of stories overall. This involved stories about terrorism trials, stories
about the ‘war on terror’ and about hostage taking, although most of the
stories in this category were about terrorism more generally, rather than a
specific terrorist event (so, for example, statements or reports about
terrorism by politicians or police chiefs).
• Religious and cultural issues, accounting for
22% of stories overall. This included discussions of Sharia Law, debates about
the wearing of veils, dress codes, forced marriages, the role of Islam in
Britain and the Danish cartoon story. These stories generally highlighted
cultural differences between British Muslims and other British people.
• Muslim extremism, accounting for 11% of all
stories. Stories about Abu Hamza, as the single most newsworthy British Muslim,
were especially prominent in this category.
The US State Department no longer publish
reports on the patterns of global terrorism. These three news hooks are likely
to cast Muslims as the source of problems or in opposition to traditional
British culture. By contrast, we found that only 5% stories were based on attacks
on or problems for British Muslims. Perhaps ironically, the notion of Islam
phobia scarcely featured as a news topic.
Our
analysis of the Lexis Nexis database (see Table 1) suggests that the coverage
of British
Muslims
in the British Press increased dramatically after September 11th, 2001 (with
74% of the coverage in 2001 falling in the months of September, October and
November). This was the starting point of an increased focus on British
Muslims, and although coverage in 2002 fell back a little, coverage in 2002
appears to be nearly five times higher than in 2000.
Table
1: Stories about British Muslims over time
Year
Frequency of Stories
2000
352
2001
2185
2002
1673
2003
1917
2004
2399
2005
3812
2006
4196
2007
3213
2008
34667
From
2002, we see a steady increase in coverage year on year until 2006 (see Figure 1).
What
is notable about this increase is that it appears to have its own momentum, so
that by
2004
coverage surpassed 2001 levels.
Figure
1: Stories about British Muslims over time
This
figure is based on an extrapolation of the five months of coverage available to
us, assuming that coverage from June to December 2008 will be commensurate with
the coverage from January to May. As we might expect, we see another
significant increase in 2005 (the year of the July 7th attacks), although
coverage continued to increase further in 2006, reaching a level 12 times higher
than in 2000. Although coverage appears to level off a little in 2007 and 2008,
it remained higher than in any year before 2005
This
suggests that:
1.
The increase in coverage of British Muslims from 2000 to 2008 is clearly
related to the terrorist attacks in 2001 and 2005, however:
2.
It has also developed a momentum of its own, lasting well beyond and
independent of these highly newsworthy events.
We
also note that US State Department’s figures on the global level of terrorist
incidents does not suggest a commensurate increase in terrorist activity, at
least in the earlier period between 2000 and 2003, with more casualties in 1988
than in 2001 and with the two years after 2001 recording fewer terrorist
incidents than in any of the previous 20 years (see Lewis,
2005)
As
we shall see, the increase in media coverage is elucidated by our subsequent
analysis. The ‘war on terror’ has become a long-running story in its own right,
and this is the main lens through which British Muslims are reported. However,
in recent years we have also seen the growth of other related topics – notably
cultural differences between Muslims and non- Muslims in Britain. The rest of
our analysis is based on our sample of 974 news articles from 2000 to 2008.
These stereotypes and the grouping of all
Muslims as extremists can lead to prejudice, discrimination and violence
against them, and even to their segregation from communities. Our debate
will firstly be focused around whether this stereotype is fair, and also on
ways to break it down.
Muslim audiences, on the other hand,
believe that the media in Western countries does
not portray Muslims with the same sense of completeness, as it would, for
example, people of other faiths. There is a perception that media coverage of
Muslims focuses disproportionately on bad news and on conflicts, with less time
given to contributions made in other areas such as the arts, sciences, culture,
cuisine, and so on. And many Muslims claim that coverage of what are often
many-headed disagreements is often reduced to simplistic descriptions of two
sides that oppose each other.
Quite apart from their concerns about domestic
media coverage, many Muslims feel that coverage of the world, and particularly
the developing world, focuses to a disproportionate extent on disasters and
conflicts. While this is a feature of the news business in general – bad news
sells better than good – the 24/7 news culture makes British Muslims
particularly sensitive to perceived comments on Muslims and Muslim societies in
general. There is a similar sensitivity to perceptions that Palestinian
attitudes and spokesmen get less airtime on mainstream media than Israeli
counterparts.
Today, it is not uncommon for Muslims from Britain to find
themselves the subject of news, often on the front pages of newspapers, or
leading the television news bulletins. As
with international news about Muslims, violence, conflict and argument also appear to dominate national news
coverage of Muslims. In the past
year alone, national news
stories concerning Muslims have included: the London bombs of 7 July 2005;
controversies involving Muslim girls and school uniforms; a BBC Panorama film questioning the ideological roots of the Muslim Council of
Britain; and turmoil at the Central
North London mosque in the Finsbury Park area of London. Each is an example of
conflict, or violence. The Finsbury Park mosque is a large, red-brick
purpose-built mosque, a short walk away from the Arsenal football ground. It
serves an ethnically mixed Muslim community. Several terror suspects are known
to have used the mosque, chief among them its former Imam Abu Hamza Al-Masri.
Al-Masri was removed from his job but continued to defy the mosque’s trustees after his sacking by leading congregational prayers on the
pavement outside. He was eventually arrested and convicted on charges of
inciting terrorism. All of this, together with Al-Masri’s physical appearance
(two hook hands and only one eye), helped to turn the mosque into a major media
story.
‘7/7 Footie Fan who blew up commuters. Khaka
…Tube bomber from a chippie. Suicide Lad aged 22’. Here terms
associated with terrorism are juxtaposed with terms expressive of Britishness,
thus ‘tube bomber’ is juxtaposed with ‘chippie’ whilst above it ‘7/7’ is
juxtaposed with ‘footie fan’, and below it ‘suicide’ with ‘lad’. These
juxtapositions transmit the notion of the ‘enemy within’, the idea that
an attack on Britishness has occurred from its heart. Throughout the
period under study we find the press simultaneously representing
Britishness as fragile and threatened by a ‘suspect’ Other, and
claiming its importance and association with values such as the rule of
law, the right to security, tolerance, secularism, freedom of religion,
fairness, and non-violence. The press appears here to participate in the discourse
of a ‘crisis of Britishness’ which has clearly gained momentum in recent years
(Byrne, 2007; Ward, 2008).
This research examines the link between Muslim
voters and their MPs in Parliament. The central focus is: When considering
issues of significance to Muslim voters, do MPs from constituencies with
relatively larger Muslim populations act differently than MPs
from constituencies with smaller Muslim populations? Although theories of
political representation from the United States would expect such a
pattern (Miller and Stokes 1963), the British parliamentary system has
displayed a relative weakness for representing Black and ethnic minority
interests (Saalfeld and Kyriakopoulou 2011).
Table 5 Positive, neutral or negative associations of articles, by
paper
Title Association of articles (%) Number of articles
Negative Neutral Positive
Financial Times 89 5.5 5.5 37
Independent 80 2 8 48
Star 100 - - 11
Mirror 100 - - 16
Express 71 21 8 14
Mail 97 - 3 31
Telegraph 91 7 2 43
Sun 100 - - 19
Guardian 85 12 3 52
Times 89 7 4 46 15 | P a g e
Independent on Sunday 100 - - 2
Star on Sunday 100 - - 2
Sunday Mirror 100 - - 2
Sunday Express 100 - - 4
Mail on Sunday 100 - - 2
Sunday Telegraph 100 - - 2
News of the World 100 - - 7
Observer 100 - - 7
Sunday Times 100 - - 8
Total 91 5 4 352
Table 6 Positive, neutral or negative associations, by type of
paper
Publication type Association of articles (%)Number of articles
Negative Neutral Positive
Tabloid 96 3 1 112
Broadsheet 89 6 5 240
Totals 91 5 4 352
Table 7 Positive, neutral or negative associations of images
(percentages)
Association of images
All newspapers Negative Neutral Positive (Number)
TOTAL 80 14 6 214
Table 8 Positive, neutral or negative associations of images, by
type of paper (percentages)
Association of images
Publication type Negative Neutral Positive Total
Tabloid 88 8 4 30
Broadsheet 77 17 6 70
Totals 80 14 6 100
The first findings are drawn from a small piece of research undertaken
soon after the events of 9/11. Research showed that following 9/11, more 13 million
people bought a national newspaper in Britain every day. In total, the Times,
Telegraph, Guardian, Independent, Financial Times, Daily Mail, Daily Express,
Daily Star, Mirror and Sun added an additional 2.5 million copies to their
normal combined print runs, all of which sold out on a daily basis. The
disseminative audience of the British press was therefore much wider
immediately following 9/11 than on what might be termed a ‘normal’ day prior to
it. From Brian Whitaker’s research, it was shown that during the period 1
January to the 9 September 2001 inclusive, the number of articles about Muslims
and Islam in the national newspapers was
Newspaper No. of articles
Guardian 817
Independent 681
Times 535
Daily Telegraph 417
Daily Mail 202
Mirror 164
Daily Express 139
Sun 80
Daily Star 40 7 | P a g e
It is too easy to ‘blame’ the media for the negative imaging
of Muslims and Islam. Barker and Galasinski (2001: 7) argue that “texts are
unable to police the meanings to be constructed from them.” It is clear that
social forces other than textual discourse (in this case the print media) also
contribute to dominant images and stereotypes our society constructs of Muslims
and Islam. As social actors, humans do possess the ability to create different
meanings and representations of Muslims and Islam.
Because the media
plays an important social role in our community with the ability to influence
people, this means that journalists too are shaped by various social forces
which contribute to their understanding of Muslims and Islam. It is clear that
how one perceives particular events is always influenced by factors including
their background, education, and wider social and cultural environment. In addition
to this, and perhaps more relevant to this report, is that the newspaper
editorial practices and writing styles also significantly shape the type of
language and images that will form portrayals of Muslims and Islam, and the
type of information provided. The issue of ‘women and Islam’ continues to make
news in our media in complex ways. The ways in which the media represents men
and women, and the relationship between men and women in Islam varies depending
on what is in vogue, what events are taking/or have taken place, and with which
media format we engage. Television, for example, produces powerful sets of
images through camera footage, and magazines and newspapers also print powerful
images to suit their angle. But the text of news articles also contributes to
our understandings of Muslim men and women by adding more information to that
which we collect and make sense of via imagery.
Where Muslim men are
generally depicted as fanatics, terrorists, extremists and militants from
Middle Eastern backgrounds (images which usually place men in mosques praying
in Muslim garb or in camp training settings wearing balaclavas and holding
machine guns), or Asian men with white robes and long beards (such as Abu Bakar
Bashir), women are depicted in various way which may demonise Islam or generate
sympathy for Muslims depending on the context of the story. The veil that marks
a Muslim woman’s religious identity has been the subject of much discussion and
debate between Muslim and non-Muslim women and men alike. A significant number
of Western women in particular have questioned the use of the veil and have
argued that it is oppressive. Many Muslim women interpret their use of the veil
as non-oppressive and empowering, a view that now seems to be ‘tolerated’ or accepted
by the broader community more generally.
In any case, Muslim
women’s bodies and sexualities have become a contested site for discussion
among the public. This sense of needing to manage and control Muslim women’s
bodies and religious expression is exemplified by France’s introduction of a
law banning religious symbolism through clothing in public schools. A binary
has thus emerged in the news media where on the one hand Muslim women are
depicted as Islam in the Media 31 oppressed and on the other as empowered. This
largely depends on the newspaper in which the article is printed. Based on the
articles in the database constructed for this report, The Age printed more
positive stories about Muslim women which were balanced and progressive,
whereas the Herald Sun tended to print stories that portrayed Islam as sexist
and women as oppressed.
In general all the respondents expressed a very pessimistic
view with regard to Muslim representation in the media. They blamed the media
for being unashamedly biased towards Muslims and presenting a negative image
that suggests Muslims are ‘backward’, ‘primitive’, ‘terrorist’ and
‘misogynistic ‘people. According to the findings, 62.4% of the respondents
thought that the media is Islam phobic and 15.6% of respondents that the media
is racist. A further 9.8% of them believe that the media is overtly fair but
covertly destructive towards Muslims. Only 4.0% of the respondents said that
the media was fair in representing the Muslims. This represents a very small
proportion of respondents and should ring alarm bells in the British media.
The research is the most
extensive study done to date and is in the same vein as earlier studies such as
the Cardiff University report of 2008, ‘Images of Islam in the UK: The
Representation of British Muslims in the National Print News Media 2000-2008’
and a further ESRC/AHRC funded research project on ‘Media portrayals of
religion and the secular sacred’ led by Professor Kim Knott and Dr Elizabeth
Poole (2010).
The study, conducted by
Dr Paul Baker, Professor Tony McEnery and Dr Costas Gabrielatos, reiterates key
findings from other studies reinforcing claims of media bias towards fringe
groups at the expense of mainstream Muslims, and on word association with Islam
and Muslims engendering negative connotations with the religion and its
adherents.
From the research
summary paper:
“A Lancaster University research team led by Dr.
Paul Baker and funded by the Economic and Social Science Research Council, has
collected and analysed over 200,000 newspaper articles written about Islam and
Muslims between 1998 and 2009. This amounted to 143 million words of journalism
which was analysed by the team using computer software to search for and
identify language patterns across the articles in order to give an idea of the
most frequent ways that Muslims are written about. Generally, the team found
that the majority of representations took care not to make over-generalising
statements about Muslims in an overtly negative way, although some tabloids did
use headlines such as MUSLIMS TELL BRITISH: GO TO HELL! (Daily Express,
November 4th, 2010), BBC PUT MUSLIMS BEFORE YOU! (The Star, October 18th,
2006), MUSLIM SCHOOLS BAN OUR CULTURE (Daily Express, February 20th, 2009).
“More generally expressly
negative, and at times vituperative, were a few columnists, especially in The
Sun newspaper. For example, Julie Burchill (The Sun June 24th, 2009), on Muslim
women who wear the veil wrote: ‘We let shroud-swishing zombies flout OUR standards
of freedom and tolerance every day.’ Jeremy Clarkson (The Sun, June 30th, 2007)
wrote: ‘the "Muslim community" was allowed to parade through London
urging passers-by to blow up a skyscraper and behead the infidels’ and John Gaunt
(The Sun June 20th, 2008)wrote ‘we wasted thousands in legal aid on silly
little misguided Muslim girls to take schools to court for the right to dress
like a Dalek in a full veil’. Yet, in the past, complaints about patently Islam
phobic columnists to the Press Complaints Commission have resulted in the
response: ‘The column clearly represented a named columnist’s personal view and
would be seen as no more than his robust opinions’ – a defence that some
newspapers and columnists have clearly exploited.
“More common than the expressly negative representation of Muslims, was a more subtle set of implicitly negative representations, with Muslims often being ‘collectivised’ via homogenising terms like ‘Muslim world’ and written about predominantly in contexts to do with conflict, terrorism and extremism. For example, collectively, when a British newspaper mentioned the word Muslim/Muslims an ‘extreme belief’ word like extremist or fanatic occurred next to it about 1 in 20 cases (proportionally, The Guardian wrote least about extremist Muslims only writing about them 1 in 36 times - at the opposite end of the spectrum The People had extremists as 1 in 8 examples of all mentions of Muslims). Interestingly, however, the British press couldn’t decide for some time what to call Muslim extremists. Back in 1998 they were hardliners, although they had changed into fanatics by 2001. Militants took over between 2002-6, slightly overlapping with the rise of radicals from 2004-8. Starting in 2005, the press slowly settled on extremists. This is a general picture - individual newspapers had their favourite terms: The Times also used zealots while some of the red-tops sometimes opted for muppets, sheep, lowlife and cretins. Overall, references to extremist Muslims were much higher than to ‘moderate’ ones. For every one moderate Muslim mentioned, 21 examples of extremist Muslims are mentioned in the British press. It is also interesting to note that so-called ‘moderate Muslims’ often got praised in a way which implies they are good because they aren’t fully Muslim.
“Explicit references to extremism were also found next to the word Islamic 1 in 6 times across all the newspapers – indeed it is likely that Islamic is now difficult to use in a neutral way as it is so heavily laden with negative overtones and disapproval.
“The Daily Mail caused consistent and known offence by spelling Muslim as Moslem; up until 2003, The Mail and The Express regularly wrote about Moslems. The spelling has a pronunciation which sounds like the Arabic word for ‘oppressor’, and the Muslim Council wrote to both newspapers asking them to spell it Muslims in future. The Express complied, but The Daily Mail continued with Moslem for about a year after that, being the last newspaper to abandon the spelling. Where The Mail did occasionally write approvingly of Muslims it was when it played one social group off against another as in the story ‘Driven out by the Gay Mafia: Leading Scots Muslim forced to quit charity group after objections to his support for traditional family values’. (Daily Mail, June 15, 2006).
“Overall the project highlighted a serious journalistic problem – Muslims who just get on with their lives aren’t seen as newsworthy, so it’s the likes of Abu Hamza who are more likely to attract press attention. Indonesia, which has the largest population of Muslims, is written about much less than troubled yet less populous areas such as Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. Yet when newspapers write about a minority group like Muslims, if they focus on a violent subset of that group, there is the danger that the majority suffer guilt by association. In a climate where the UK can spawn a group like the English Defence League, a wider set of representations of Islam would signify a welcome change to reporting practices. Muslims deserve a better press than they have been given in the past decade.”
This research summary is for the forthcoming publication ‘Discourse Analysis and Media Bias: The representation of Islam in the British Press’ by Baker, P., Gabrielatos, C. and McEnery A. (2012, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
“More common than the expressly negative representation of Muslims, was a more subtle set of implicitly negative representations, with Muslims often being ‘collectivised’ via homogenising terms like ‘Muslim world’ and written about predominantly in contexts to do with conflict, terrorism and extremism. For example, collectively, when a British newspaper mentioned the word Muslim/Muslims an ‘extreme belief’ word like extremist or fanatic occurred next to it about 1 in 20 cases (proportionally, The Guardian wrote least about extremist Muslims only writing about them 1 in 36 times - at the opposite end of the spectrum The People had extremists as 1 in 8 examples of all mentions of Muslims). Interestingly, however, the British press couldn’t decide for some time what to call Muslim extremists. Back in 1998 they were hardliners, although they had changed into fanatics by 2001. Militants took over between 2002-6, slightly overlapping with the rise of radicals from 2004-8. Starting in 2005, the press slowly settled on extremists. This is a general picture - individual newspapers had their favourite terms: The Times also used zealots while some of the red-tops sometimes opted for muppets, sheep, lowlife and cretins. Overall, references to extremist Muslims were much higher than to ‘moderate’ ones. For every one moderate Muslim mentioned, 21 examples of extremist Muslims are mentioned in the British press. It is also interesting to note that so-called ‘moderate Muslims’ often got praised in a way which implies they are good because they aren’t fully Muslim.
“Explicit references to extremism were also found next to the word Islamic 1 in 6 times across all the newspapers – indeed it is likely that Islamic is now difficult to use in a neutral way as it is so heavily laden with negative overtones and disapproval.
“The Daily Mail caused consistent and known offence by spelling Muslim as Moslem; up until 2003, The Mail and The Express regularly wrote about Moslems. The spelling has a pronunciation which sounds like the Arabic word for ‘oppressor’, and the Muslim Council wrote to both newspapers asking them to spell it Muslims in future. The Express complied, but The Daily Mail continued with Moslem for about a year after that, being the last newspaper to abandon the spelling. Where The Mail did occasionally write approvingly of Muslims it was when it played one social group off against another as in the story ‘Driven out by the Gay Mafia: Leading Scots Muslim forced to quit charity group after objections to his support for traditional family values’. (Daily Mail, June 15, 2006).
“Overall the project highlighted a serious journalistic problem – Muslims who just get on with their lives aren’t seen as newsworthy, so it’s the likes of Abu Hamza who are more likely to attract press attention. Indonesia, which has the largest population of Muslims, is written about much less than troubled yet less populous areas such as Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. Yet when newspapers write about a minority group like Muslims, if they focus on a violent subset of that group, there is the danger that the majority suffer guilt by association. In a climate where the UK can spawn a group like the English Defence League, a wider set of representations of Islam would signify a welcome change to reporting practices. Muslims deserve a better press than they have been given in the past decade.”
This research summary is for the forthcoming publication ‘Discourse Analysis and Media Bias: The representation of Islam in the British Press’ by Baker, P., Gabrielatos, C. and McEnery A. (2012, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
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