The Presence of Stereotyping in Western News Media - Essay Example

The Presence of Stereotyping in Western News Media Western Misperceptions of Islam and Muslims November 2009 Contents Introduction Stereotyping 2 Stereotyping of Islam and Muslims 3 The Non-Stereotypical Reality 5 Insight into Stereotyping 6 Preventing Stereotyping 7 Conclusions 8 Bibliography 8 Word Count: 2,123 Introduction Western misperceptions of Islam and Muslims provide a good example of the presence of stereotyping in Western news media. In the most prevalent stereotyping, this is characterised by the condensation of a Muslim as a violent extremist, and serves the purpose of displacement for justifying foreign policies while perpetuating the myth of Muslim terror. On the unintentional side, there is simple ignorance, which leads to making assumptions and resorting to stereotyping. Stereotyping The Chambers English Dictionary defines making a stereotype of a person as characterising or categorising too readily or simplistically. In the field of Psychology, stereotypical thinking is identified as a vehicle for prejudice, and is defined more precisely as being comprised of the processes of condensation and displacement. Condensation is the outcome of fusing a number of images or ideas to make a single composite. It is this that tends to be typically either simplistic or something entirely unrelated. By displacement is meant, “feelings of hostility or anger are directed against objects that are not the real origin of those feelings” (Giddens, 1998:213). Stereotypes thus highlight contrasts between the stereotyping and stereotyped groups, and serve to perceive what is being stereotyped as the ‘other’. Stereotyping in the media occurs most frequently when news is to be covered pertaining to a foreign culture, race or religion, or a society about which little is known. For example, Ramasubramania & Oliver (2007) showed that racial minorities are often portrayed stereotypically in various media contexts and associated with narrowly defined roles. Stereotyping and the media has been an area of intense debate, and have spawned several studies since Walter Lippmann first raised the issue. The issue is important because it affects cross-cultural relations. “In an age of telecommunications and information networking, people’s understanding of one another and their relationship building are enhanced or diminished by the impact of the mass media” (Mahboub Hashem, 1984 in Kamalipour, 1997:151). Stereotypes are strengthened through repetitious negative, or otherwise biased, portrayals. Where stereotyping reinforces a previously and commonly held stereotype, it serves to build a consensus of public opinion (Kamalipour & Carilli, 1998:41), whether it is in the form of tolerance, indifference, or oppression. In a positive way then, stereotyping is a necessary tool that aids the media in achieving a consensus. Advances in technology and the pressure of deadlines have increased media reliance on stereotypes (Kamalipour, 1997:75). However, the focus of this study is on the negative stereotyping, whether deliberate or unconscious. It is suggested that some journalists simply have time constraints, and therefore it is easier for them to reproduce what is already existent or easily available information. Either way, the stereotypes are perpetuated needlessly. Even if further portrayals do not make an explicit association, the past explicit associations enable implicit associations to be made, which still reinforces erroneous perceptions. Thus, it is not uncommon for news journalists to leap to sensational conclusions when faced with scant and confusing evidence, and say, what is “only plausible in the context or time frame of the hundreds of other news stories we have read about ‘crazed Islamic terrorists’” (Skinner et al, 2001:352). Stereotyping of Islam and Muslims The current most widespread and troublesome misconception or stereotypical image of Muslims in the minds of many westerners is that of conjuring them as terrorists or otherwise violent extremists. Childs (2009) points out, "When the word Muslim is mentioned some people automatically think of the word terrorist". There are also several other stereotypes in relation to Islam and Muslims as well, but it is sufficient to examine this particular one. Prominent examples of sensational reporting occurred around the turn of the century with the crash of Egypt flight 990 in 1999, and the destruction of the World Trade Centre Towers in New York in 2001. In all these cases, the western media made premature announcements by quickly pointing the blame on so-called Muslim terrorists. There is ample evidence that Muslims were not behind the World Trade Centre incident but that would cause digression. Suffice it to say, no Muslims have been found guilty over this in a court of law. Many Americans especially, previously had little knowledge of Arabs, so their exposure to media “laden with negative stereotypes” (Weston, 2003) was their primary source of information. These and other such incidents perpetuated the myth of Muslim terror. Instead of introspection, and tackling the root causes of terrorism, the political and media machinery further elaborated such myths, and used them to base subsequent policies and actions (Poole & Richardson, 2006:189). This highlights the terrible repercussions of stereotyping. Several American foreign policies, such as its terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan, can be traced to misguided notions (Mitchell & Marriage, 2003:65). The World Trade Centre incident exacerbated the negative stereotyping that was already prevalent before. Therefore, the problem or stereotyping did not arise anew due to this incident. In Madani’s (2000) analysis of newspaper headlines during the latter half of the 20th century, it was shown that Arabs were the most negatively depicted group. Moreover, that media sources and films were the major source of information that defined non-Muslims’ attitudes. A more focused analysis covering the period 1988 to 1992 and 4 major western newspapers examined how Muslims were characterised and the overall tone of news coverage. “Findings lend some support for the expectation that most press coverage of Muslims would be negative in tone” (Kashif et al, 1996) although no strong media bias was shown to exist. Akbarzadeh & Smith (2005) studied over 450 items in Australian newspapers stretching over three years following the World Trade Centre incident. Although showing no evidence for Islamophobia, the problem of ignorance was evident. Similarly, Shahzad & Khalid (2008) who analysed the U.S. media (Newsweek and Time magazines) covering a decade prior to the incident, showed a dominantly negative coverage of Muslim countries. The researchers concluded that the “portrayal of Muslim countries in Newsweek and Time magazines was dominantly negative”. Another classic case of misinformed prejudice and media acting as jury occurred in 2003 when 28 Pakistanis were arrested for allegedly possessing materials, that one officer described ‘could be’ explosives. The media immediately jumped to announcing the foiling of an Al-Qaeda terrorist plot, and even the supposed intelligence services claimed the same due to the presence of important personnel in the area (and therefore the need to show how strong their security was). It turned out that the material was nothing but sugar, and the ‘mysterious texts’ were even more harmless. Nonetheless, the damage on people’s impressions had been done. A series of three studies by Park et al. (2007) explored the strength of implicit associations of Arab Muslims with terrorist attacks, and their relative valence using explicit attitude measures. It was revealed that terrorism was the most common association followed by violence in general. However, it was also shown that implicit and explicit prejudice could be moderated by priming the participants with either positive or negative information beforehand. Thus, exposing the participants to scenes of the world trade centre bombing increased the anti-Arab bias. This study also highlights that stereotypes are not fixed and unchangeable; rather they can be later moderated. The problem of stereotyping has become so serious that many innocent Muslims have been the innocent targets of ‘reprisal attacks’ both verbally and physically. With the increase in hostility, the OIC (Organization of the Islamic Conference) has recently called for banning the defamation of Islam (Spitzer, 2009). The Non-Stereotypical Reality The association between a minority of people with extremism or even more remotely, terrorism, is by no means exclusive to Muslims. In particular, Zionists have continually perpetrated the worst forms of terrorism especially in Occupied Palestine, so much for learning from the Holocaust. Other recent perpetrators of violence in human history have been the Indian military in Kashmir, Serbian Orthodox militia, the Catholic IRA, and the Nazi Germans. The worst terrorist activity in the whole history of mankind was the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by that Christian state (USA) now masquerading as the world’s saviour for fighting against terrorism. In the Middle Ages too, the atrocities of the Christian missionaries have not been forgotten. However, no other religious groups as such are labelled as terrorists. As for the religion of Islam, the major stereotyping described above is totally in contradistinction with its teachings. The root meaning of the very word Islam has connotations of peace, and the Holy Quran is unequivocal in stating the constraints for fighting. That is, the killing of innocent people is considered as transgression and is forbidden (Holy Quran, 2:190). Insight into Stereotyping Apart from the deliberate misrepresentations for conspiratorial reasons, the question that arises is why do stereotypical perceptions abound. In other words, what are the underlying causes for their continued existence? The characteristics of stereotyping and some explanations for stereotyping are already briefly covered above, but what is needed further, is a deeper insight into more fundamental factors. At the root of unintentional stereotyping is ignorance followed by the impulse to make assumptions. Another point of consideration is that many western societies are highly individualistic. On the other hand, Arabs, like people in other collectivist societies, value good manners, generosity, honour, reputation, respect for others, hospitality, etc. This diametric contrast also bears on what societies expect and how they function. The problem of stereotyping also has its roots in ethnocentrism i.e. the values of other peoples and cultures are judged according to one’s own cultural standards. This took on an apparent intellectual form of Orientalism in the past when studies were made of foreign cultures and religions including Islam and Muslims under the belief of self-righteousness. The traditional stereotyping in history, before the advent of mass media, was influenced by the religious rivalry; the crusades in particular (Hafez, 2000). Stereotyping was thus seen as normal then. Therefore, modern mass media per se is not entirely to blame for originating stereotypes though it is for perpetuating them. Jahoda (2001) supports this view that “stereotypes were prevalent well before the advent of mass media”. It is within this framework that journalists merely become victims of ignorance, or else they are influenced by political and ideological factors. Bird & Dardenne (in Weston, 2003) contend that “journalists use culturally embedded ‘story values’ to make sense of events … [and often make] judgements quickly – on deadline – and thus ‘invariably resort to existing frameworks” (ibid). In the US in particular, the news media are actually discouraged from specialising in particular fields (Kamalipour, 1997:75), which therefore makes them dependent even more so on stereotyping. According to Berkowitz (1997:379), these ideological factors could be unconscious. It is the preparation of news and viewing it within a set of perceptions that “imposes ways of seeing” that Lippmann called a stereotype. His understanding was that stereotyping “precedes reason” because defining takes place before seeing rather than the other way round. Another reason for stereotyping is the very nature of news media itself. Moderate voices are simply not as newsworthy as radical voices. The argument of a deliberate or intentional basis to stereotyping sees a directing purpose for the stereotypes. It lends support from the likes of Halliday (2003:6) who sees the existence of an inner need for Western society to have “a menacing , but subordinated, other”, and Hippler (2000) who sees it serving the function of justifying military spending and carrying out aggressive foreign policy. Preventing Stereotyping Journalists have what Edward Said (1997) termed, ‘intellectual responsibility’ for depicting what they produce, which requires a sophisticated grasp of the methods of journalism. This means taking positive steps to be fully acquainted with the facts of a situation to be reported, and being aware of the implications of perpetuating stereotypes. Muslims themselves could help to reduce stereotyping, for instance by complaining as suggested by journalist Trevor Mostyn who observed that Muslims are not good at lobbying because they feel it will not achieve anything (Communique Partners, 2005:36). There are also relatively few Muslims participating in think tanks. It is the absence of counteracting items, of views and information, which allows stereotypes to persist. In the longer-term, better-informed individuals should be involved in western media agencies, and given responsibilities to properly reflect the multi-cultural and globalised world we live in. This includes placing Muslims themselves in such responsible positions for reporting on events pertaining to their own culture and religion, or at least for providing informational assistance to others. Conclusions Stereotyping is due to both a deliberate policy on the part of some and due to incompetence on the part of the majority. 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