New research shows that newspaper stories about Muslims suffer disproportionately from factual inaccuracies and distortions
It has become a running joke amongst those of us used to reporting
these things that Muslims are the new blacks. Given that the
side-effects of this special status include increased levels of stop
and search, police raids on family homes and attacks by those who hate
you for what you represent, it isn't a very funny joke.
On Tuesday the London mayor, Ken Livingstone, launched a report
commissioned by the Greater London Authority to look at another
unwelcome symptom of such status: the way people's perceptions of you
and those like you are influenced by misleading news coverage, which
often bears very little resemblance to the facts.
Alongside Hugh Muir of the Guardian, I conducted research for two chapters of the report, The Search for Common Ground: Muslims, Non-Muslims and the UK Media
- one on the experiences of journalists from Muslim backgrounds working
within the mainstream press and another analysing a number of
particularly misleading stories that ran in late 2005 and early 2006.
What became clear during our research was that the well-worn saying
"never let the facts get in the way of a good story" applied
disproportionately to stories that could be given a "Muslim" slant.
Basic journalistic standards such as interviewing those people involved
and checking facts simply went out of the window. Serious factual
inaccuracies and distortions were the result.
Take the story headlined HOGWASH: Now the PC brigade bans piggy
banks in case they offend Muslims, published in the Daily Express in
October 2005. The story claimed that NatWest bank had removed images of
piggy banks from their promotional material in an effort to avoid
offending Muslim customers, since pork is forbidden in Islam. The paper
called such action "barmy" and "bonkers", adding in a leader column on
the same day: "It is unhealthy to indulge in the sort of political
correctness that makes us trim our national culture in ludicrous ways".
Readers letters poured in, with more than one expressing the sense of
"feeling like a foreigner in my own country".
NatWest told us that they were originally called by journalists from
the Lancashire Evening Telegraph, and told them in no uncertain terms
that their decision to take down posters bearing images of piggy banks
from branches had nothing to do with concerns about causing offence. In
a statement for our report, they called this suggestion "absolute
nonsense and without any foundation whatsover". The much less exciting
fact was that an autumn savings campaign was being replaced in branches
by a winter personal loans campaign, hence the new posters.
This did not deter the newspaper however, who ran the story, or the
Daily Express, who followed it up without making the reasonable checks
with the NatWest press office which might have established whether or
not the claim was true. The story was picked up by newspapers around
the world and, disturbingly, ended up in Melanie Phillips' book Londonistan as further evidence of political correctness gone mad.
Journalists, myself included, always get a bit snippy when they are
criticised. Having worked for newspapers whose editorial line I might
not have agreed with, I know the pressures journalists can be under to
make a story work, regardless of the facts. But we as a profession need
to take more responsibility for the stories we put into the public
domain and the effect they have on wider society. True or not, these
stories sink deep into public consciousness and can't help but
influence the way people perceive each other. When, as in the case of
stories involving Muslims, and before them black people and Jewish
people, they are not balanced by more rounded coverage, the results can
be deeply damaging.
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