Terrorism

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Hey media, in the name of journalism, can we please stop the 'Islamophobia' bias?

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There's that word again — this time on the front page of the New York Times.

What word?:

Islamophobia

What does it mean? The Times doesn't say. But the newspaper reports that there's been a "surge" in it:

Hebh Jamal does not remember the Sept. 11 attacks. She was 1. Growing up in the Bronx, she was unaware of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and was mostly insulated from the surge in suspicion that engulfed Muslims in the United States, the programs of police surveillance and the rise in bias attacks.
But in the past year, especially in the past several months, as her emergence from childhood into young womanhood has coincided with the violent spread of the Islamic State and a surge in Islamophobia, she has had to confront some harsh challenges of being a young Muslim in America.

Similarly, as GetReligion noted yesterday, the Los Angeles Times used the I-phobia word in a recent story on Muslims women saying headscarves have made them a target for harassment:

The Washington-based nonprofit Council on American–Islamic Relations has documented dozens of Islamophobic incidents nationwide since last month, including many against women wearing headscarves.

Dictionary.com defines "Islamophobia" as "hatred or fear of Muslims or their politics or culture."

So what's my problem with journalists sprinkling their stories with that term? 


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Anti-terrorism services: Stories log good intentions but don't help us understand

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If anyone invents a time machine, it won't work better than mainstream media these days. With the latest wave of jihadi violence, such as the recent attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, we're getting retreads of stories on how Muslims have much in common with the rest of us -- with little explanation of what that means.

It's like 2001 all over again, when stories like this one in the Sun Sentinel, where I used to work, covered interfaith services and open houses at mosques in the wake of the 9-11 attacks. Except that back then, we consulted our archives to see what had been already done.

Some in the current crop, of course, are better than others. WWSB, the ABC affiliate in Sarasota, Fla., puts up a local politician as the loyal opposition:

Multiple terrorist attacks have ignited strong dialogue, including GOP front runner Donald Trump's recent call to ban on all Muslims coming into this country.
Florida campaign manager and local Republican Party chairman Joe Gruters defended the controversial claim earlier this week.
"Certainly there's terrorist hotbeds in various countries, and we should be making sure the people we're letting into this country are vetted properly," said Gruters. "For that reason I think Donald Trump is taking a courageous stand."

Mind you, I'm not approving or disapproving Gruters' position. I personally don’t consider it courageous to hold an entire population responsible for the actions of a tiny knot of nuts. But that's not my call as a reporter, and it's not WWSB's call.

The station adeptly takes a local cultural event as a time peg. Station reporters found members of the Islamic Society of Sarasota and Bradenton taking part, using the International Food and Crafts Festival to mix with neighbors and introduce them to Islam. The station gets comments from two members of the local mosque and, of course, from a leader in the Florida chapter of CAIR. (However, the report doesn't say that it's a Muslim organization or even what the acronym stands for.) And it quotes a non-Muslim attendee who voices surprise that American Muslims "look like you and I, not just the stereotypes."


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Got those bad headline blues again: Did Falwell take a shot at all Muslims or not?

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At this point, I really, really wish that I didn't have to address the whole "who is to blame for bad headlines" thing again. I mean, your GetReligionistas have written so many posts about this issue in the past.

Let me make this comment again: (click here please).

Now, what's up? I have received several questions about the recent Washington Post "Acts of Faith" story about the remarks by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Jr., in which -- in the aftermath of the San Bernardino massacre -- he urged qualified Liberty University to get legal permits to carry concealed weapons.

The problem is that it appears there were radically different headlines used on different versions of this story. In my opinion, what appears to have been the early headline is journalistically problematic, to say the least. Hold that thought.

But first, let me stress once again:

... It's important for readers to understand that reporters rarely write the headlines that accompany their stories. Editors and specialists at copy desks write the headlines. It's tough work, and I say that as someone who did that job for several years early in my career.
A good headline can really help a story. A bad one can warp the framework in which the reader encounters the ideas and fact in the text. Alas, that's just the way the business works.

Now, with that in mind, please listen to the full context of this very controversial Falwell quote -- using the YouTube file from CNN that is featured at the top of this post. Here is the quote as published in the Post:


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Their blood still cries out: Crux opens series investigating global presecution of Christians

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If you follow religion news carefully, and you have been on Twitter over the weekend, you are probably aware that John L. Allen, Jr., and the team at Crux -- a Catholic-oriented news site operated by The Boston Globe -- have published the first in what will be a series of occasional stories about the persecution of Christians around the world.

This is not surprising, in light of the fact that Allen (surely one of the most productive reporters working on the religion-beat these days) has produced a book entitled "The Global War on Christians: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Anti-Christian Persecution."

It is also significant that a recent Pew Research Center study found, as Allen noted in his opening report in this series, that Christians were harassed either by the government or social groups (think militias or mobs) in 102 of 198 countries -- more than any other religious group. Under normal circumstances, Pew surveys on this kind of news topic tend to lead to bumps in mainstream coverage.

However, talking about the persecution of Christians is not your normal subject, for a variety of reasons. There are people on the cultural left who simply cannot see Christians as anything other than oppressors. For two decades, powerful forces in Washington, D.C., have fought attempts to promote religious liberty at the global level.

Meanwhile, there are also people on the cultural right who -- when looking at the Middle East in particular -- struggle to identify with the groups being persecuted and slaughtered because these ancient flocks are not the right kinds of Christians. (For more information on that topic, see this "On Religion" column that I wrote nearly two decades ago.) Focusing on human rights can also be bad for business, you know.

In light of this deep and diverse skepticism, it's crucial that Allen's main story -- The New Christian Martyrs: Globally, religious persecution is Christian persecution -- includes the following:

Christians are, of course, hardly the only community facing savagery and oppression.


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Media report a spike in anti-Muslim crime since San Bernardino — where's the hard data?

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If you follow the news, you've probably seen a headline or two — or 50 — proclaiming that anti-Muslim crime has spiked since the San Bernardino massacre. Similar reports followed the Paris attacks.

The narrative of a backlash against Muslims makes sense, of course, given the Islamic extremist ties to last week's California massacre and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's strong rhetoric.

But from a journalistic perspective, where is the hard data? 

As #WhoIsBurningBlackChurches trended on Twitter back in July, we urged caution in the reporting:

A half-dozen church fires in such a short period sounds like a lot. But is it really? Journalists must be sure to put the fires — and the number of them — in context.

A similar dose of discretion would seem appropriate in the case of anti-Muslim incidents.

Instead, many journalists seem to be quite comfortable equating anecdotal evidence with a solid trend.

Take the Los Angeles Times, for instance:

Attacks on mosques appear to have become more frequent and threats against Muslims more menacing since the terrorist attacks in Paris and the shooting in San Bernardino.
“A pigs head at a mosque in Philadelphia, a girl harassed at a school in New York, hate mail sent to a New Jersey mosque … I can’t event count the amount of hate mail and threats we have received,” said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.


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As Donald Trump pushes to keep Muslims out of U.S., CNN touts 'the truth'

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Each weekday, the Pew Research Center emails links to top religion headlines. It's a great resource for following news in the world of faith. (Sign up here.)

Today, the top four national headlines (here, here, here and here) and the top three international headlines (here, here and here) all relate to Donald Trump's call for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States."

Here at GetReligion, of course, we earlier highlighted five crucial sources for journalists to quote concerning Trump's proposal.

Many of the above links provide relevant and insightful responses to Trump's proposal from politicians, world leaders, constitutional scholars, theologians, refugee officials, ordinary citizens and other important voices.

But I wanted to highlight what I found to be a helpful little story from CNN.

Headlined "The truth about Muslims in America," the CNN piece is told in the ever-popular listicle form — certainly not a bad way to draw attention amid all the noise surrounding Trump and his rhetoric:


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Digging deeper into the Tashfeen Malik mystery: 'Another day, another slaughter'?

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For the past few days, Tashfeen Malik has been the flavor of the hour in press reports about the San Bernardino shootings as folks have slowly realized it was her who was the radicalized element in this murderous couple. It appears that the wife converted her husband. As tmatt said very early on of this case, it was likely that, "all roads lead to Saudi Arabia."

Here’s what the Los Angeles Times had right up top on Sunday:

Tashfeen Malik, the 29-year-old female shooter in the deadly San Bernardino rampage, was a onetime "modern girl" who became religious during college and then began posting extremist messages on Facebook after arriving in the U.S., a family member in Pakistan told the Los Angeles Times.
The family member, in Malik's hometown of Karor Lal Esan who asked to not be identified, said Malik's postings on Facebook were a source of concern for her family.
"After a couple of years in college, she started becoming religious. She started taking part in religious activities and also started asking women in the family and the locality to become good Muslims. She started taking part in religious activities of women in the area,” the family member told The Times.
"She used to talk to somebody in Arabic at night on the Internet. None of our family members in Pakistan know Arabic, so we do not know what she used to discuss," the family member said. The family speaks Urdu and a dialect of Punjabi known as Saraiki. 

If you look up at the bylines, you see three reporters and a dateline of Islamabad. Somehow they found the village this woman was from, got a translator and dug up the relatives.

Read further down in the story, and you’ll see they’re quoting from a Pakistani TV channel, from BBC, various friends at their San Bernardino mosque, the family attorney, a Pakistani who lives near Karor Lal Esan who claimed he knew the family well and that they were “extremist;” plus anyone else the Times could dig up.

What resulted was a lengthy narrative with three lead reporters and 31 contributors.

Yes, 31.


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When Donald Trump proposes banning Muslims, five crucial sources to quote

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I keep thinking Donald Trump will smile like the Devil and admit his entire presidential campaign is an elaborately orchestrated "Punk'd" prank on the American public.

Until then — and as long as The Donald remains, somehow, a serious Republican contender — journalists must take him and his crazy statements/antics seriously.

The latest from The Onion — er, The Associated Press:

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (AP) — Donald Trump called Monday for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States," an idea swiftly condemned by his rival GOP candidates for president and other Republicans.
The proposed ban would apply to immigrants and visitors alike, a sweeping prohibition affecting all adherents of Islam who want to come to the U.S. The idea faced an immediate challenge to its legality and feasibility from experts who could point to no formal exclusion of immigrants based on religion in America's history.
Trump's campaign said in a statement such a ban should stand "until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on." It said the proposal comes in response to a level of hatred among "large segments of the Muslim population" toward Americans.
"Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life," Trump said in the statement.

Here at GetReligion, we advocate a traditional American model of the press in which reporters quote key sources, refrain from editorializing (such as calling Trump an idiot, as a blogger like me might do) and letting readers judge the facts for themselves.

In the case of Trump's Muslim proposal, here are five crucial voices that news reports would do well to reflect:


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So journalists, are 'conservative' Muslims practicing a 'conservative' form of Islam or not?

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One of the advantages of being, well, a journalist who is a bit on the old side is that you remember debates and discussions in the past that resemble arguments taking place in the present.

So flash back several decades with me to the era known as the Cold War. One of the topics debated in the first newsrooms in which I worked was how to use the terms "liberal" and "conservative" when talking about Communists, especially in the Soviet Union.

Editors decided that the more socialist, the more Communist, the more Soviet people were, the more "conservative" they were. They were "conservative" Communists, even though "socialist" and "Communists" are normally words that describe a form of political liberalism. They were "conservative" liberals because they were resisting change to the Soviet system.

People who wanted change in the old system, thus, were "liberals," even if these changes would take their nation away from socialism/Communism.

The key, of course, was that "conservative" was bad and "liberal" was good.

With that in mind, let's move to the current debates about the violence in San Bernardino and, in particular, the following passage from a piece in The Washington Post, which included remarks from the father of Syed Rizwan Farook:

On Sunday, Italian publication La Stampa published an interview with Farook’s father, also named Syed, in which he said his son had harbored anti-Semitic animosity. Reached at his son Raheel’s home on Sunday morning, the elder Farook said his views differed from those of his son.

“He was going towards [conservatism],” he told reporters through the gate of the home. “His views were conservative, my views were liberal.”


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