Reporting Islam

International best practice for journalists

Jacqui Ewart, Kate O'Donnell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138709331
• eBook ISBN: 9781351780513
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Reporting Islam argues for innovative approaches to media coverage of Muslims and their faith. The book examines the ethical dilemmas faced by Western journalists when reporting on this topic and offers a range of alternative journalistic techniques that will help news media practitioners move away from dominant news values and conventions when reporting on Islam.

The book is based on an extensive review of international literature and interviews with news media editors, copy-editors, senior reporters, social media editors, in-house journalism trainers and journalism educators, conducted for the Reporting Islam Project. In addition, the use of an original model – the Transformative Journalism Model – provides further insight into the nature of news reports about Muslims and Islam. The findings collated here help to identify the best and worst reporting practices adopted by different news outlets, as well as the factors which have influenced them. Building on this, the authors outline a new strategy for more accurate, fair and informed reporting of stories relating to Muslims and Islam.

By combining an overview of different journalistic approaches with real-world accounts from professionals and advice on best practice, journalists, journalism educators and students will find this book a useful guide to contemporary news coverage of Islam.

1

INTRODUCTION

Introduction

It is surprising given the significant body of research that exists into news media coverage of Muslims, that researchers have largely failed to focus on solutions or treatments that might address the problematic nature of much of this coverage. Since 9/11, there has been an increase in the interest of the research community in the representation of Muslims in news media, although that is not to say that this was not a subject of research prior to those events. However, much of this work has focused on negative representations in mainstream news media. What has been largely missing from the academic conversation about the images and stories that have largely negatively represented Muslims in Western news media, are ways of transforming journalism about Muslims and their faith. There have also been very few studies that have focused on examples of best practice in news media coverage of stories about or involving Muslims.

The need for well-informed reporting by Western news media is reinforced by the fact that Islam is the world’s fastest-growing religion (Pew Research Center, 2015: 5). Based on current growth trends worldwide, the Muslim population is predicted to be 2.76 billion by 2050 and by 2070 Islam is predicted to be the religion with the world’s largest number of adherents (Pew Research Center, 2015: 14). Muslims come from a diverse range of countries, not just those that could be said to be Muslim-majority countries, and that poses significant challenges for those reporting on the extraordinarily geographical and cultural diversity that characterises the world’s Muslim populations in the twenty-first century.

Our book’s foundations

Recent events, including the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States of America (US) and his remarks that a register of Muslims would be “good management” (Hillyard, 2015), followed by his attempt to ban entry to the US of people travelling from seven Muslim-majority countries (White House, 2017), reinforce the need for more informed news media coverage of such stories. These developments combined with the history of poor news media coverage of stories about Muslims in some Western news media reinforce the need for this book. This book builds on the international body of research and draws in part on a major project led by one of the authors and contributed to by the co-author. That project, called the Reporting Islam Project, was led by the first author Jacqui Ewart through its four stages (2015–2018) and from July 2014 to December 2016 it was co-led with Professor Mark Pearson. It was funded by the Australian government. Our book culminates with an explanation of how a series of research-underpinned approaches to and resources for best practice for journalists reporting on stories about Muslims were developed, trialed, tested and refined as part of the aforementioned project. Those resources were developed with the primary aim of assisting journalists to be better informed when reporting on Islam and Muslims. In addition, this book provides a pathway to achieving best practice through reflections on examples of international news stories and an editorial that prima facie exhibit good practice, but that also demonstrate more subtle problems. We also identify how these stories could be transformed through attention to specific journalistic practices. While we believe that journalists need to be better informed when reporting on stories about or involving Muslims, we are not suggesting they need to be experts in the religion of Islam, but rather that they return to the basics of good journalism. In this respect the focus should be on fact checking, balance and ensuring the voices of those affected by an issue are heard in news stories.

In writing our book an extensive review of the international literature helped to identify and understand the problematic nature of news media coverage of stories involving Muslims and to locate studies that suggested ways in which this issue/these practices might be addressed. We also situate our book within the relevant bodies of literature that provide a context to understand some of the key issues covered by news media in relation to Muslims and Islam. In addition, our book also draws on a series of interviews undertaken as part of the Reporting Islam Project with relevant parties, including news media editors, copy-editors, senior reporters, social media editors, in-house journalism trainers, journalism educators and other academics in which two key questions were asked amongst a series of questions. They were: Why do journalists report on Muslims in the way they do? And: What resources would journalists need to assist them in more informed reporting on Muslims?

In combination this research enabled the following:

• identification of approaches to and influences on news media coverage of Muslims in the Western world;

• identification of best and worst practice in reporting on key issues associated with Muslims;

• development, testing and refining of resources for journalists so that they would be better informed when covering these types of stories.

As identified earlier, there is a substantial deficit in the international research as to how journalists in Western countries might address these problems. This book provides insights into why journalists employed by Western news media organisations approach reporting on stories involving Muslims in particular ways and offers best practice models that can be applied by those journalists.

Overview

The focus of this book is on mainstream Western news media. Because of the research and data on which it draws, it is aimed at journalists, journalism educators and journalism students in Western countries. Given the research basis the focus is on the aforementioned groups from Australia, New Zealand, North America, the United Kingdom (UK) and Europe. It does not cover issues associated with or arising from those journalists covering international wars or stories set in non-Western contexts. Thus, this book may not be suitable for journalists reporting for non-Western media.

Chapter 2 provides the reader with an overview of the approach we take to our book and what prompted us to do so. We then provide a brief overview of some of the factors – legal and ethical – that also inform the reportage of Muslims in Western democracies. Because of the different laws that affect journalism in Western countries, it is not possible to provide a detailed outline of each of the individual laws, so rather the focus in on the types of laws that come into play when journalists are reporting on stories involving Muslims. For example, these might include anti-discrimination, vilification laws, national security laws and those laws more commonly experienced by journalists in the course of general reporting, including privacy, contempt, defamation and breach of confidence. Similarly, ethical codes vary across countries, within major news media organisations, newsrooms and amongst individual journalists. This chapter provides pertinent examples of relevant laws and ethics and identifies some of the key issues in relation to Islam and its adherents that inform best practice when it comes to reporting stories about or involving Muslims. We then outline the approach used to the Reporting Islam Project. We conclude with some important lessons from the project to assist those who use our model to address similarly problematic types of news media coverage.

Chapter 3 explores some of the key conceptual frameworks that inform research into studies about news media coverage of Islam. The focus here is on three key conceptual frameworks: Orientalism, Islamophobia and racism, all of which are important in considering the issues at the core of this book. The first of these, Orientalism, is reviewed to better understand how and why Muslims are represented in Western countries in the ways they are. The second conceptual framework that informs this book, Islamophobia, seeks to explain not only the prejudice and discrimination directed at Muslims but also its effects. The third is the general body of knowledge about racism as research shows that this can underpin news media approaches to coverage of culturally diverse groups. While it is acknowledged that racism can be a problematic concept to use in discussing news media coverage of Muslims, the cultural diversity of the Islamic world means that racism cannot be ignored in considering the aforementioned issues. In exploring these three conceptual frameworks, this chapter reflects on key works and provides a context for understanding why these factors are relevant.

Chapter 4 examines some of the significant body of international research into mainstream news media coverage of Muslims. While most of that research focuses on examples that highlight the sometimes problematic nature of this news coverage, this chapter identifies that very little attention has been paid by scholars to best practice examples of news media coverage of Muslims. Significantly, this chapter also explores the impacts of poor, inaccurate and problematic mainstream news media coverage because research highlights that this kind of reportage can lead to social exclusion and division (Ewart, Cherney and Murphy, 2017; Grossman and Tahiri, 2013). The majority of journalists would be appalled at the idea that the stories they produce could cause harm to those who are already the target of some who would like to further the cause of social division. Within the body of research that characterises the subfield of news media and Islam, evidence has emerged of links between problematic stories about or involving Muslims and attacks both physical and verbal on Muslims by individuals or groups who have erroneous understandings about Muslims (Ewart and Rane, 2013). There can also be attendant impacts on the mental health and well-being of those who are targeted in these types of attacks (Grossman and Tahiri, 2013).

Chapter 5 deals with three approaches that can contribute much to informed news media coverage of Muslims and a variety of other groups: peace journalism, constructive journalism and solutions journalism. Each of these approaches provides potential contributions to improved news media coverage of stories about Muslims. These approaches also afford insights into issues associated with news media coverage of Muslims, in particular cultural diversity. This book approaches the issue of news media coverage of Muslims through a lens that emphasises that newsworthy stories need to be and should be covered. To that end this book does not prescribe a set of approaches, but rather suggests ways in which journalists might improve their knowledge and practices in this very crucial and relevant area.

Chapter 6 draws from a set of interviews undertaken with journalists, journalism educators and key Muslim community members from Australia and New Zealand in relation to the main issues associated with news media coverage of Islam and Muslims. These interviews focused on two key issues: why journalists report on Islam and its adherents in the way they do and what resources they would need to better inform their coverage of these stories. These findings are complemented by the conclusions of the existing research about news media coverage of Islam and Muslims and, in particular, three key studies, two from the UK and one from the US, which examined the production processes associated with news stories about Muslims and their findings about how that coverage might be improved. These reports, combined with the insights provided by the interviewees, shed light on the way news media represent stories about Muslims and Muslims’ responses to those representations.

Chapter 7 provides a new method for analysing news stories and editorials about Muslims and Islam. It outlines the applications of our Transformative Journalism Model including its:

1. Provision of a method for a nuanced understanding of news stories that initially do not appear to be problematic or deficient;

2. Use as a research tool to assess best practice elements in news stories;

3. Applicability as a checklist for journalists wanting to improve the way they gather information for and write stories about Muslims;

4. Provision of a tool for researchers to develop interview questions to explore journalistic practice, outputs.

It explains how we developed our model and delves into key examples of best practice in reporting on Muslims and Islam. These examples cover research in the Europe, UK and the US. This chapter also draws from lessons learned in the Reporting Islam Project (mentioned earlier in this preface) and in combination these studies highlight the need for those journalists who do not specialise in reporting Islamic affairs to return to the basics when covering stories about Muslims. These basics, distilled from the three international examples, include balance, objectivity, fair and accurate reporting, ensuring correct attribution, fact checking (and calling out those who seek to use “alternative facts”), ensuring professional and ethical codes are followed, ensuring a broad range of voices are heard in reportage, and ensuring that photos, illustrations and audio-visual materials accurately reflect the story and do not create controversy or replicate stereotypes. While most of the research that has tackled the issue of problematic reportage has suggested that reporters revisit the basics of reporting, there are more specialised areas of reporting when it comes to news media coverage of stories involving Islam and Muslims. Our book provides a basic overview of how some Western mainstream news media cover stories about Muslims, and it examines solutions to that coverage. Importantly it provides a new model for analysing news stories about Muslims, that also acts as a checklist for journalists when coverage the aforementioned stories.

Following Chapter 7, the next five chapters (Chapters 8 to 12) embark on a series of case studies that illustrate in practice some of the theory and key issues raised in the first half of this book. These five case studies are designed to analyse good practice examples of reporting on key issues associated with Muslims and Islam and also provide analysis of examples where practice has been identified as lacking and in need of improvement. They include key issues about terrorism arrests, migration and refugees, sharia law and halal food debates, women’s issues and mosque proposals and constructions. The aforementioned issues are often the stories that attract inflammatory coverage and the ire of individuals and groups who are ill-informed about the religion of Islam and its adherents. They are also amongst some of the key issues researchers have examined in relation to news media coverage of Muslims (Ahmed and Matthes, 2017). The resultant fallout from the responses of these groups to such stories can lead to social division (Grossman and Tahiri, 2013). We have deliberately avoided one of the traps that some mainstream Western news media fall into – conflating cultural issues with the religion of Islam. To that end we do not cover issues such as forced marriage and female genital mutilation because they are grounded in specific cultures, not the faith of Islam. These chapters suggest that there are commonalities in these stories and the way they should be approached – that is in a measured, balanced, factual and non-emotive manner. Most importantly if religion is not the driving factor behind these practices then journalists should avoid mentioning it.

Chapter 13 showcases the approach taken to the Reporting Islam Project. This includes the development of best practice reportage guidelines, training and curriculum modules, resources including a mobile app and website designed to assist journalists and journalism students when reporting on stories involving Islam and Muslims. These were developed as a result of reviewing and assessing the international literature, receiving input from working journalists, journalism educators and students and from the members of the Reporting Islam Project’s international Expert Advisory Panel. They were also refined following discussions with key Muslim community members in Australia. While we note that these resources were developed, trialled, tested and refined in Australia, we believe they will benefit Western journalism communities, particularly given the considerable input from professional journalists, future journalists, journalism educators and members of Australia’s Muslim communities. In the training and education sessions held around Australia as part of the Reporting Islam Project, trainers discussed many of the possible approaches to reporting on issues involving Muslims to avoid the simplicity that can accompany a “one size fits all” approach to the complexities that accompany these topics. This approach allows for considerations such as the type of news media outlet, the environment in which journalists operate, the particular style of a news media organisation and the political and social environment of the country in which journalists work. The aim of the training was to prompt journalists to consider their newly acquired knowledge of Muslims and their religion, and the ethical and legal issues that inform reporting and editing choices.

Chapter 14 concludes our book by considering the ways in which the best practice approaches suggested in this book can be implemented in newsrooms and universities. The factors that are needed in order for these best practice approaches to operate in newsrooms are outlined, particularly the production...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Setting the scene
• 3 Conceptual frameworks for analysing news media coverage of Islam: Orientalism, Islamophobia and racism
• 4 Problems and effects
• 5 Approaches for more ethical coverage
• 6 Journalists’, educators’ and Muslims’ views of the reportage of Islam and Muslims
• 7 A model for transformative journalism
• 8 Reporting radicalisation, terror incidents and arrests
• 9 Reporting Muslim women – veiling
• 10 Muslim, migrant, refugee? Conflating identities
• 11 Reporting sharia and halal
• 12 News media coverage of mosques
• 13 Best practice approaches to training and resources
• 14 Conclusion
• Index