Voices Shaping the
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Media and representationMedia representations of Muslims, Islam and the Islamic world frame many of the discussions among research participants. While there is an acknowledgement that some media stories about Muslims may be ‘fair’, there is genuine and continuing frustration about the largely negative impact on life opportunities generated by sustained selective and stereotypical reporting. In addition some respondents express concern at the lack of any positive representation of Muslim Australians within the media more widely, pointing in this regard to a failure in public policy. We know from the quantitative research that many of the respondents seek alternative sources of news through international media available on the Internet and via free to air, cable and satellite television. Family and friends also feature as information sources on current affairs. Young Muslim Australians are avid users of many different kinds of news sources, whether print, electronic and web based information. The most common websites accessed by the young people surveyed included personal blogs, Facebook, MySpace sites, MSN, YouTube and Vimeo, various free email service sites (yahoo, gmail, hotmail) and search engines (Google, Wikipedia, Ask.com), as well as school, university and tutoring websites. Many young Muslims have Facebook pages and count on newsfeeds from around the world. Others resist it and focus on face‐to‐face communication in ‘the real world’. A young woman advocates social media: Facebook is one of the best ways for me to find out what’s going on in the Muslim world because I’ve got so many friends who live overseas and they post articles from their local newspaper about stuff. There’s stuff that I found out weeks before it was ever in The Age about what’s going on in the Muslim world, really significant events. Because they just post the article and you can read it. Then you post it and it just viruses on. So it’s much quicker for me, than to sort of scroll through Guardian each day and The New York Post and papers from Jordan and Saudi. I would simply not have time for that. Just by going through my newsfeed I can see what everyone else is linking to. As previously mentioned the ‘traditional’ media (TV, radio, newspapers) and ‘new’ media (Internet news sites, Internet forums etc), were regarded as problematic sources of information, presenting distorted stereotypical views of Muslims, leading to misunderstandings between Muslims and non‐Muslims. Media bias looms so large in the minds of some community leaders that they will refuse to participate in media interviews or stories, fearing that their views will be distorted or manipulated. One woman argued that the media was ‘brainwashing’ communities, by turning every story that involved Muslims into an interrogation or denigration of Islam as a religion. … if you listen to the radio or watch the TV, during the 24 hours you never see a positive comment about Islam. You always see something – whenever something bad is happening – they put the name of Islam … they didn’t talk about the issue, they were talking about the religion, they brought up the matter of religion on the table. So I’m saying that if we start, we should start from media. Several young people in different focus groups drew attention to the negative impact of the media on their community. They hold the media responsible for creating disunity and division amongst different groups. Some young men thought the media set out to cause disunity in the community by targeting people of Middle Eastern background and, more lately, those of Indian or Somali background. They felt that the media always mentioned a person’s ethnic background if the above ethnicities were thought to be involved in crime, but ethnicity was not mentioned when the criminal was of Anglo‐Australian or other background. Some young people in Sydney accessed Iranian or Russian channels for world news, as these were regarded as less biased, or at least presenting different perspectives on matters. They see the Australian media and government as closely aligned. ... I think the government or the media is trying to cause disunity within the community. I’m sure everyone would mostly agree with it ‐ especially with what you see on the news and what not. It’s very racist. ... Yes. Like within Australia ‐ They try to create these racial wars with one another. For example, the ‘riots’ ... or any little incident that ever happens. How come you always hear Middle Eastern or Muslim before a person’s name? ...And it’s not even Middle Eastern these days. It’s spread to Indians. It’s spread to Somalians, Sudanese. ... Aren’t we all Australian citizens? What’s it got to do with what race you are? Why do you put the person’s race before his name ... And it’s not only individual racism. It’s called corporate racism or systemized racism where a government makes a system of certain laws to target certain people for certain specific intentions that they have to make even normal people become hateful ‐ and this is so wrong. It really is wrong. Some women experience discrimination because they wear the hijab and many felt that the media contributed strongly to negative views of Islam. I’ve been a Muslim girl and wearing a scarf and people talk about me. I just think they’re ignorant. They haven’t read much and they just go with the media. If they sit down and want to find out, they would ask the right questions. I will answer them the right way and everything will be okay. But I just see that they’re the followers, not me. A young man suggested that Islam or Muslims were only aired or printed in the media as negative stories and rarely as ‘good news stories’. The media’s biased. They only show what they want to show. If the Muslims are doing something good, most of the time they won’t show it, because ‐‐‐ For example, if there were people doing something bad, if it was a Muslim they’ll state it. They’ll clearly state it A young man told of the discomfort that arises from media reports about Muslims. We get uncomfortable that people say things about us that we don’t do. There was an overwhelming recognition in consultations that ‘Christian’ or ‘Jewish’ identifiers were not used in media stories, leading to their views of double standards in the practice of media reporting. Political discourses about Middle Eastern crime in Sydney, which repeatedly labeled second generation Australians of Lebanese background as ‘Lebanese’ and never ‘Australian’ (Collins and Reid 2009), potentially stigmatize and isolate young people. Derogatory ascriptions were regarded as distressing, particularly for young Muslim Australian men. One young man remarked … Like everyone sees us Lebanese Muslims as thugs … but reality is ‐ no we’re not like that. I’m not saying we’re all not like that ‐ there are people like that … yeah, I wouldn’t lie. But most of us, we’re not like that. It’s just what the media portrays. One key stakeholder commented that young people are becoming more adept at handling negative media portrayals. I think a lot of them have learnt to have a thick skin and not take it on board personally, not to personalize it. Look without a doubt, it is upsetting, but I also think Muslim youth are not stupid, I think they’re actually quite intelligent to know that at the end of the day, it’s a capitalist society and it’s about selling papers. If that’s what sells and that’s what works, then so be it. I think if you look at the increase of Muslims wanting to be journalists, or within the social media, the world of social media – that’s another role model, there’s a sister that works in the ABC... Others talked about the stress caused by constantly needing to ‘put out fires’, going against a tide, or of being ‘under siege’, in relation to defending Muslims against negative media especially in relation to national and international incidents. …I think there’s a real lack of leadership for young people in our community. And I think a lot of it is because our community’s very under resourced. We’re poor and we feel constantly under siege, so the few resources we have, it’s just going into putting out fires and into damage control. We still don’t seem to really be able to establish, anything sort of long‐term, dedicated things to helping young people. and Yeah, it really is (reactionary). And I know people who are involved … are frustrated by it themselves. They are frustrated that they are putting out fires and stuff like that. But I just feel like we can never get ahead. Young people need a space to talk about how media presentations affect them, as the impact may be quite heavy without them realising its source. A youth worker elaborates: … So like we deal with the youth in the western suburbs and we have discussions about the latest thing that’s happened in the media and how it’s affected them. We get a broader range of views but the younger people, they don’t think about it until we bring it up. When something happens, they don’t think about how it will affect them and how it has affected them. They don’t realise it has actually affected them. And when you talk about it, they, “Oh, yeah, yeah.” They open up and start talking. So I think it depends on whether they’re exposed to that kind of environment or not. One woman reflected on what she might think of Muslims if she were not a Muslim and only knew about Muslims from the media, referring to terrorism and sexual violence. You know what? If I were non‐Muslim and looking at that, I’d probably look at me too and say ‘What the hell is wrong with you people?’ You know, ‘What is wrong with you?’ If that’s all you see, … there are no good news stories and the two top news stories are both examples of people being psychopaths and they’re both Muslim. Government was regarded as having a potentially positive role in helping improve the image of Muslims. It starts with the premise that Muslims made a difference to humanity in a constructive way. One key stakeholder said: I would emphasize a difference, because Muslims have made a huge difference to humanity. So I guess rather than to underplay the differences between Muslims and non‐ Muslims, we need to emphasize this. … But we’re in a position now, especially if the government is interested in ‘things Muslim’, to expose all of the really essential and big contributions of Muslims to society. A number of younger and older Muslim Australians are actively engaging the media. One journalist, Melbourne‐based Saeed Saeed (features editor for The Leader suburban chain), has argued that a more sophisticated Muslim community use of the media would produce quite a dramatic turn‐around in the temper and tone of media discussion. Muslim Women’s Network spokesperson, Dr Nasya Bahfen (an RMIT journalism lecturer and ABC broadcaster), further argues for the training, lobbying and education of a generation of new young Muslim media workers to enter the mainstream. Other internet media activists such as Muslim Village’s Ahmed Kilani, have developed alternative avenues for representation and media, with for example 100,000 hits per month on the revised and upgraded Muslim Village website. Directory: sites -> default -> files -> documents -> 01 2014 documents -> Ace abi catair customs and Trade Automated Interface Requirements documents -> Mobile audio/video recording systems documents -> The south australian government gazette documents -> All public acts appearing in this gazette are to be considered official, and obeyed as such documents -> Union interparlementaire inter-parliamentary union 01 2014 -> Muslim Voices – Hopes and aspirations of Muslim Australians Centre for Muslim Minorities & Islam Policy Studies 01 2014 -> Prepared by: Kais Al‐Momani Nour Dados Marion Maddox Amanda Wise C 01 2014 -> Editors: Kerry Download 1.05 Mb. Share with your friends:
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