Media industry in Covering Islam by Edward W Said - Essay Example

How the Book d “Covering Islam” by Edward W. Said on socio-political issues in the Print Media Industry may be relevant to the Media Industry.”(Student Name) Course Name Faculty Name Date Table of Contents I. Introduction II. Literature Review III. Observations IV. Impact on the Future of Media Industry V. Alternate media industry sector VI. Conclusion VII. Reference I. Introduction The role of media is very important for any society. Media is one of the modes of information exchange. In the last few years the overall industry has rapidly developed in many senses in the level of reach, frequency, mode of presentation and approach. UK has the second largest publishing industry in Europe with turnover of at least £18.4 billion. More than 8000 plus companies have employed around 164,000 people1. The importance of Newspaper Company is to give useful information or news that has importance in people’s life. If one considers various reasons for writing it can vary from commercial, political to true journalism. It is very challenging for the journalist to present facts and figures of any incident or news in unbiased way. Robert Stone says that the “writer’s responsibility. …consists in writing well and truly, to use a Hemingwayesque Locution.”2 Any writer who betrays his calling is that who either for commercial or political reasons politicise his own perception and rendering for it. This is possible in the sensitive, sensational and controversial news. War, terrorism, killings, bombing and their effects have increased in multi-folds due to the progress in communication channels. Today multiple channels, newspapers and media sources present news in various ways. Many publications are targeted for specific group of readers based on their demographic profile, needs, religions and cultural groups and many others. Various kind of information is shared through various kinds of publications. At the same time question arises on the authentication of various news. Especially in the case of any crisis, people look for information with curiosity and the kind of information available to them becomes an integral part of there thought process. This paper is based on the critics of Edward W. Said “Covering Islam”. The author has focused on the way news have been presented in the western press and media of the Islamic community. The first part of the paper reviews the book and literature. The observations are based on the book. Later on the paper explains the impact of this particular work on the future of the media industry. II. Literature Review The book was first published in 1981. It primarily focused on the issue of Iran, cold war and war. “Covering Islam” is full of examples of the work of various media groups and journalists. The views and ideas have been appropriately supported by the facts and examples. Chomsky (2002) has raised various issues on the way media has represented various issues of war, trade union issues and terrorism. The issues ranged are from the presentation of these events by media and control of powerful groups over these mediums to control thought process of mass. Said’s work “Covering Islam” is another effort which seeks attention of readers towards the biased representation of Islam and Islamic community by mainstream media. In the words of Christopher Lehmann-Haupt for The New York Times Book Review for the same book: “[He] skilfully traces the origins of American misinformation about Islam to the way that Orientalist scholarship is financed and organized in this country. And finally he pleads eloquently for the instrumentality of all historical knowledge and the needs of all scholars to be aware of their objectives in order to acquire that knowledge usefully. This plea amounts to a prescription for cultural self-awareness that will be wasted on none of us” III. Observations Various studies and theories have been developed to study the development of the concept of Islamophobia. This is very clear from the previous studies and views of Chomsky, Said and others about portrayal of the Islam, Muslim and Muslim countries unfavourable from the past. The work of Edward W. Said (1981) ‘Covering Islam’ analyses the unfavourable treatment of Islam and Islamic countries by the media. He tried to examine the same with respect to political objectives and mottos and presented critic on the way media community reacted to various issues related to the Islam and Islamic countries in the past. “Islam defines a relatively small proportion of what actually takes place in the Islamic world, which numbers a billion people and includes dozens of countries, societies, traditions, languages and, of course an infinite number of different experiences.”3 In Said’s view the media have been posing the Islamic countries as a threat to the west since the Cold War from both a religious and territorial perspective. He further blamed the political intentions to move the attention of mass from the constructive and developmental issues to the threat of Islamic countries. Various other issues are raised by Said (1996) on his work “Covering Islam”. These were related to the partial knowledge of the people in West about Islam and questioned the interpretation based on this partial knowledge. As he writes, “….representation of Islam have regularly testified to a penchant for dividing the world into pro- and anti-American (or pro- and anticommunist), an unwillingness to report political processes, an imposition of patterns and values that are ethnocentric or irrelevant or both, pure misinformation, repetition, an avoidance of detail, an absence of genuine perspective.”4 State uses Western culture and the media as a tool to disseminate the views and maintain the general consensus within society by encouraging ‘rogue’ states to be seen as binary oppositions. In the concept of Islamic world in the western society, the terrorist threat plays a huge part. Said has provided examples of the same with the description of West’s notion of Islam. Their assumptions are that ‘Islam’ can be included and described by the connotations of its proper name, “There is an unstated assumption, first of all, that the proper name ‘Islam’ denotes a simple thing to which one can refer immediately, as one refers to ‘democracy’ or to a person, or to an institution, like the Catholic Church.”5 Said is very clear in his points that the Islam is not just a religion, it has founded and influenced the cultures of various countries. The differences from one geographic region to other and on part of the world to other can be observed easily. The followers of Islam in Indonesia and Afghanistan will definitely differ from each other in the thought process, religious views and overall attitude. It is not a denomination of a religion, in the way that the Catholic Church, for example, is a denomination of Christianity. Said further argues, “Since the media strive to meet the same audience which they believe is ruled by a uniform set of assumptions about reality, the picture of Islam…is likely to be quite uniform, in some ways reductive and monochromatic.”6 In Said’s view the West is represented by the Media as modern, liberal and fully technological and unaffected by the religion or religious fundamentalism wherein non western states are represented as primitive and dominated by religion. Western culture considers itself beyond the religion and modern. It is no longer governed by religion only. “Because the assumption is that the West is greater than and has surpassed the stage of Christianity, its principle religion, the world of Islam…is still mired in religion, primitively and backwardness.”7 The theory of binary opposition allows the West to make sense of the Islamic countries. Several other theorists and academicians have described the media’s reportage of Islamic countries centres around the concept of binary oppositions. The representation and portrayal of the West has been in such a way that it was opposite to everything of the Islamic world. Stuart Hall has analysed this concept in an article entitled ‘The West and the Rest’ in detail. Hall describes the ‘West’ as, “…a society that is developed, industrialised, urbanised, capitalist, secular and modern…any society, wherever it exists on a geographical map, which shares these characteristics can be said to belong to the West.”8 In the work of Chomsky and Said the limited knowledge of Islam was considered as one of the major drawbacks of the reporters and members of media group resulted in misrepresentation of Islam. The limited and preferential access to those in the power, experts and members of religious group again hinders the positive presentations of the Islamic world. Islam has been viewed, as a religion of mystery and probably this is one of the reasons of people’s fear for it. It is difficult to break the predefined assumptions and perception of people without a reliable and concrete source of information, “What we have instead is a limited series of crude essentialised caricatures of the Islamic world presented in such a way as, among other things, to make that world vulnerable to military aggression.”9 According to Said Mass relies on the experts of the society to know about Islam and Islamic culture but unfortunately even these experts have very little knowledge about Islam that does not help the mass to know better “A little later, down come the mass media, which take from the other two units of the apparatus what is most easily compressed into images, hence the caricatures, the frightening mobs, the concentration on Islamic punishment and so on.”10 Said argues over the role of Media for the wrong portrayal of Islamic culture and dependency of mass to know about Islam from those who have little knowledge about it. Hall supports Said’s view with the argument that “Ironically, the very rules which aim to preserve the impartiality of the media and which grew out of desires for greater professional neutrality, also serve to orientate the media in the ‘definitions of social reality’ which their ‘accredited sources’, the institutional spokesperson, provide”.11 Said (1980) explains further in his book “Covering Islam” that little has changed in the media portrayal of Islam. Said has commented, very little is known of the actual terrorists and of the reasoning behind the attacks. Instead, it is the media, who firmly establish the context of events, “The lack of background is, in fact, characteristic of terrorists’ action and has to be understood in the context of a situation”.12 Said (1977), however, does not discredit the fact that incidents of terrorism have been carried out by certain Islamic states, but he stresses that this notion is not applicable collectively to all Islamic countries, “So the picture is a complicated one. There has been a resurgence of emotion throughout the Islamic world and there have been a great many incidents of terrorism…against Western and Israeli targets.”13 IV. Impact on the Future of Media Industry The critics and work of Said have already influenced various thinkers and people in general. It has provided another angle to look into the same issue. Said have emphasised on the knowledge and education of the reporters. The reporters and journalist need to know the language and the culture of the specific group they are presenting in their works because lack of knowledge leads to the misrepresentation of particular community. In the future the growth of electronic media especially internet will increase with the penetration of computers and web world. This platform is already offering an alternative media from the mainstream media. As in the book, Said criticises the press for their partial and sensitive coverage and laid down the responsibility on political leaders to divert the attention of mass from the real causes of society. In another view of Brigitte L Nacos, 1980’s terrorism reporting has educated people. There was question on the kind of understanding. Various thinkers have presented their views differently. Media or press interchangeably are one of the powerful foundations of the society. This foundation helps people knowing the world more, developing their thought and understanding about the world. Terrorism has become a threat to world. There will be hardly any country that has not faced the evils of terrorism. It can be in the name of anything. Terrorism cannot be justified by anything. This is the need for today’s world. This place more responsibilities upon media in their content and the way it is presented. The research has demonstrated that the trend and concern of the press have changed towards keeping the peace in London and show unity even in the time of crises. V. Alternate media industry sector As the book argues the mainstream media to be biased towards the community and religion specific based on the political interests, influence and profit motives. The news strengthening the old perception of people of Islamic community being anti-American is selling more. This is one of the motives which increase the comfort level of journalist to write what people want to read. Alternative media offers a platform to promote or advocate a specific political view, often dissident views. Authors such as Louis Althusser, Said and Noam Chomsky have focused on problems of the mainstream press in their writings. Their work has been a source of inspiration for the creation of many alternative press efforts. The focus on one particular view and emphasis on that by the mainstream media created need for alternative sources where people with different thoughts can get a platform for their views. VI. Conclusion The critics of Said and his works have provided food of thought to range of people from the media industry to the community. It offered a different perspective than the traditional one. However the book emphasised on problem areas but does not offer any solutions to these issues. This book can be considered as a source of alternative media which have viewed the mainstream media as biased. The journalists and reporters definitely get idea about the fair presentation of controversial issues. With the technology face of media is changing, offering various ways for the faster communication of information. The focus of Said’s work has been on the language, the way of presentation and the knowledge of presenter about the issue. This definitely has impacted the working of journalist and reporters in the media sector for their presentations. Reference Chomsky, N (2002) Media Control, The spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, Post 9/11 Edition, The Role of Media in Contemporary Politics, New York: A Seven Stories Press Publication Chomsky, Noam (2000) Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs. London: Pluto. p30 Said E. W (1981) Covering Islam London: Vintage (Vintage Introduction) Said, E (1996) Covering Islam, How Media and the experts determine how we see the rest of the world, revised edition. Vintage Books New York: Random House Inc pg 44 Hall, Stuart (1992) The West and the Rest in Formations of Modernity (1992) eds Hall, Stuart & Gieben. Open University: Polity. p277 Schlesinger, Philip (1991) Media, State and Nation. London: Sage. p21-28 and 173-198 Hall, Stuart (1996) Racist Ideologies in the Media in Marris, Paul and Thornham, Sue (eds) Media Studies-A Reader (1996) Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. p427 Debatin, Bernhard (2002) Plane Wreck with Spectators in Greenburg, B. S (eds) Communication and Terrorism: Public and media responses to 9/11. USA: Hampton Inc. p165 Islam Through Western Eyes, Edward W. 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