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In light of the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, many conversations have been started focusing on the biased Muslim stereotypes in the U.S. Nov. 13, 2015 was a somber day; the attacks in Paris came as a shock to the world. Many media outlets jumped on the multiple attacks with fervency.
I watched live coverage of the terrifying events as they came to pass on CNN, which is my go-to source for breaking news. It wasn’t long after I started watching the broadcast, however, that I found myself angered by the fact that CNN kept bringing the story back to the U.S. It was so incredibly U.S.-centric, focusing on the danger to America when people in Paris were suffering.
In a story that was about some other country’s struggle, I was seeking unbiased coverage. Is that naïve? Is unbiased coverage too much to ask from a news station that, like many others, has an inherent bias and an agenda to report news to an American majority?
News is often cutthroat, sometimes so much so that the public views journalists as scavengers. But the journalism ideal is this: Journalists go out, locate sources, ask unbiased questions and get the story. They bring it back to the newsroom and deliver that story in as neutral a fashion as possible.
I’m pretty sure most viewers have seen that the ideal isn’t a reality. Regardless, even if you can’t reach that ideal, you should at least strive for it. And the sad reality with American news media is that most news organizations just aren’t reaching the deep coverage needed to accurately depict a story.
Let’s focus on the Paris news story. CNN reported the facts, sure, but a lot of the reports were quick to label people. What the U.S. media tends to do is make a situation black-and-white so that it is easier to understand. Sure, a terror attack might actually seem pretty black-and-white at its core: you have good guys and you have bad guys.
But the problem comes when they give broad labels to the terrorists that act on their own. The problem comes when the media continues the long and problematic narrative on Muslims that has inspired so many negative opinions and negotiations in the U.S.
The alarming bottom-line in the U.S. news is this: Muslim equals terrorist. While this rhetoric has slight variations, it still always successfully does one thing; it associates terrorism with a “Muslim” label. The general public has begun to think that the Islamic communities have a responsibility to root out terrorists that they could never know about.
And it’s not just the public that is jumping to these conclusions. It’s journalists as well. A CNN broadcast from earlier this week had two anchors aggressively questioning Yasser Louati, a collective against Islamophobia in France. Louati was asked to comment on the status of the Muslim community in Paris. He explained that many of the Muslims in Paris had suffered their own losses and were also praying.
“The problem is that we’re still mixing the Muslim community and giving them, somehow, an affiliation with these terrorists,” Louati said.
“Well if your camp is the French camp, why is it that no one in the community knew what these guys were up to?” one of the anchors prompted.
Louati was dumbfounded by the question. He immediately went on to say that the Muslim community could not be held accountable for attacks that were started by a terrorist group, Muslim or not. Sounds pretty fair, considering the Muslim population is over 1.6 billion. According to studies, the amount of followers will be equal to Christian believers by 2050 if the current trend continues.
So whose fault is the apparent Islamophobia that is spreading? U.S. media has certainly played a part in it. The broadcast mentioned above is only an example of the Islamic bias in the U.S. It is more apparent when the narrative is flat-out stated, sure. But there are other ways that the media manipulates its viewers into thinking a certain way about Muslims.
Another method is keeping viewers ignorant. Many western viewers are ignorant of news coverage on the Middle East. Mostly, it’s because it’s just not highlighted in western media. Does coverage of the Middle East even exist? It definitely does, but it isn’t exactly the breaking news we saw on Paris.
The day the attacks in Paris occurred and many were changing their profile picture on Facebook to show solidarity with the French flag colors, others were sharing links about the attacks in Beirut. It happened the day before: ISIS claimed they were the ones to set off a series of coordinated suicide bombings in Beirut. But the flashing headlines never gave that event urgency.
There were many other events that happened in international waters that were not covered. Many argue that this is because Paris is closer to the western world than say, countries like Lebanon and Nigeria. Sometimes it boils down to how an event directly affects U.S. citizens.
But while the event in Lebanon may not directly affect U.S. citizens, it is still a critical story and not just for sympathy value, though the events that transpired there were tragic and certainly worthy of that sympathy. No, the main point is that the bombings are still news even by western standards — ISIS, now an enemy to most countries in the world, attempted to take down a predominantly Shia community.
By not highlighting stories like this, western viewers get the impression that ISIS is just out to attack the Western world. That is the farthest from the truth. ISIS attacks are very frequent in the Middle East but because they are not covered and do not have the same weight as attacks in places like Paris, their importance is undermined.
Here’s another example of the lack of coverage. Over the summer, I was in Kuwait. On June 26, 2015 a bomb went off in a Shia mosque, killing 27 and leaving 227 wounded. On that same day simultaneous attacks occurred in both Tunisia and Paris.
It was a terrifying revelation to hear that three countries had been attacked only mere hours after each other. The country of Kuwait was in a panic and everyone was flipping to news stations to see what kind of coverage was being conducted. But when I turned on the TV, there was no immediate news coverage on Kuwait. Anchors were still discussing the chemical plant attack in France.
I’m definitely not giving any country’s residents’ pain more “value” than the other. But I do wish the narrative would be a little less skewed and a bit more informative than what it is now. Though the bombing in Kuwait was later covered, the news didn’t ever seem to carry the same weight that Paris did.
I wrote to friends hours after the incident and many were surprised by the event. Many of them instantly started to question why ISIS would attack Kuwait, a Muslim country. Their perception was that ISIS couldn’t attack other Muslim states — because in a way, they had the perception that ISIS stood for a collective Muslim group.
Muslims are, in actuality, ISIS’ biggest targets. ISIS is all over the Middle East, and many Muslims have already voiced their obvious despise. But that denunciation from Muslims is barely covered by the media.
It’s hard to fault society for its stereotypical attitude when the U.S. media chooses to focus on certain things and not others. I’m not blaming the U.S. for not getting to the event faster than anyone else. I’m blaming the U.S. for not speaking out against its negative narrative on Islam.
Not all news outlets continue that narrative. Perhaps some are trying to change, but at a time like this, where so much hinges on the U.S.’s messages on Muslims, the news’ negative and positive connotations are crucial. Western media needs to make it a part of their agenda to change the way they report on the Middle East. Not only that, but more outlets need to start rectifying the stereotypes surrounding Muslims.
ISIS stands separate from the Muslim identity. Terrorists that happen to be Christian in the U.S. are not indicative of the Christian population, so why should it be that way for Muslims?
How we talk about a population and the biased associations we apply to a group of people will greatly affect their lives. Just look at the Syrian refugee mess that is currently unraveling in the U.S. There is a great debate about whether Syrian refugees should be allowed in certain states because of their supposedly inherent link to negative organizations like ISIS.
Colorado’s Governor John Hickenlooper released not too long ago that the refugees would still be allowed in Colorado, but that doesn’t hold true for other states. Other opinions have since varied, with many states refusing to accept any more refugees.
On Nov. 18, Tennessee GOP Caucus Chairman Glen Casada added his voice of dissent to the conversation.
“We need to activate the Tennessee National Guard and stop them from coming into the state by whatever means we can,” Casada said of the Syrian refugees already in the country.
Presidential candidate Donald Trump made a similar statement during a news conference on Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2015. Trump suggested additional surveillance against Muslims entering the country, saying that they should carry special IDs to show their faith.
It is terrifying to think that a man running for president of the U.S. is evoking a situation that is similar to the one in Nazi Germany. Jews had to wear badges distinguishing them from Germans to show that they were the oppressed minority. What Trump has suggested is the same disgusting discrimination.
Their voices are two of many that stand in a long and fearful biased narrative of Muslims. Most news media boils the labeling down to this: Every Middle Easterner is a Muslim, every Muslim is a terrorist. That is a stereotype that is not only false but also extremely harmful to both the people it targets as well as the Americans who hear it.
In order to alleviate these stereotypes and their negative connotations, U.S. media has a responsibility to break them apart with their reports. Certainly the public has that responsibility as well — not every bit of information can be handed to them on a plate. But if the so-called watchdogs of society can’t even get their priorities right and if they continue to perpetuate negative stereotypes without debasing them, this endless cycle will remain just that: endless.
The U.S. has always meant to stand for and protect freedom. But the most recent proclamations by authorities are alarming because they contradict what our constitution is meant to stand for.
