National Security Files

Wednesday 5 - 5.30 pm

In English.

Muslims can find themselves the centre of any debate these days, usually without having evensaid or done anything. Now watch them tackle the big issues!

Presented by Mohammed El-leissy and Dakhylina Madkul.

Contact nationalsecurityfiles@gmail.com

CRAM Article November 2007: Media and the manufacturing of fear

You can’t ignore the influence the media holds over the many people. It claims to represent the views of society – while in all reality, it works to create and shape those views. For example, would September 11 been so etched into the psyche of society if the media hadn’t kept replaying the images of the plane crashing into the World Trade Centre? Would Schapelle Corby have had so much public sympathy if the media hadn’t picked up her story?

The media makes money by keeping the public scared and feeling like if they don’t buy the newspaper or watch the news, they will miss out on something important. Nothing keeps people scared then fear of minorities – cue the Muslims.

Muslims have been in the media for a long time. The early Afghanis who came here in the 1800’s as workers for the British were often seen as different, and even un-acceptable, in the way they lived. There were stories published in the local Adelaide paper at that time demonising them even though it was Afghanis who played an important part in opening up Australia's interior for industry and building desert railway tracks for the very people who demonised them.

As of late we have seen the Australian media take a sharp turn in again focusing the spotlight on Muslims. Calls have been made for Australian Muslims to learn English, as though it was their religion that caused them not to speak English in the first place?

Almost daily, page after page is filled will stories on Muslims, Islamic terrorism and Muslim fundamentalists. I recently conducted an “autopsy” on a Sydney newspaper to find that almost a third of the news section of the newspaper was devoted to bad-Muslim stories. In the majority of cases Muslims were linked with violence, terror or non-conforming to the normal way of life. They were portrayed as aliens and un-intelligent.

Peter Manning, the former general manager of ABC’s Radio National and then head of Channel Seven’s News and Current Affairs, and now Adjunct Professor of Journalism at the University of Technology Sydney, conducted a study* onto the way Muslims were portrayed in the Australian media. He conducted an analysis of 12,000 articles discussing Muslims to which he found that in more than 60% of cases, the words ‘”violent”, “death”, “attack”, “kill”, “suicide” or “gunmen” were in close proximity to the words “Arab”, “Palestinian”, “Muslim” or “Islam.”

We are going down a dangerous path. If the mainstream media keeps demonising Muslims, it will only be a matter of time when the public will demand action to be taken against this segment of the community. And as we have seen with Prime Minister John Howard, politicians are all too happy to capitalise on mobilising the mainstream population against minorities.

Fear sells papers, fear draws ratings and nothing brings more fear then mention of “the other.” As long as the media continues to marginalise Muslims and see them fit only in the spectrum of terrorism and murder, they will continue to be pushed further away from the mainstream Australian community.

The media sadly today feels it can create stories on Muslims rather then just report them. Case in point, in September a young Muslim girl named Ayten Ahmet entered a beauty pageant. No one in the Muslim community commented on this event - Muslims have bigger issues to worry about. That wasn’t good enough for the mainstream media. They knew they could twist this into an issue to once again show Australia how backward and hate-filled Muslims really are. They called every Muslim representative they could find asking everyone what they thought. Some Muslim representatives said they didn’t really care, but since you’ve asked we don’t think it’s a good thing. The next day a newspaper screamed, “Muslim community bitterly divided over Muslim beauty pageant entry!” Talkback callers went on about these un-reasonable Muslims failing to give women any freedom and refusing to accept Australian ways. Muslims were horrified to see the media do this to them. No one in the Muslim community had made an issue of this event until the media approached them and when they were approached they gave simple dignified answers that stated their opinions on the issue.

It was the media trying to create the Aussie-version of the Danish cartoon controversy, another issue that no one cared about for an entire six months after the cartoon were published until the media again brought it up. One Muslim representative who was interviewed about the Muslim beauty pageant story (or is that non-story) expressed to me his shock at the response he got from the journalist when he told him that he thought the whole thing was a non-issue. The journalist again pressed him for a more fanatical/violent/emotional response. Again he calmly told the journalist that he didn’t care about it, because it wasn’t even an issue. The journalist became frustrated, according to his recollection of the interview, and told him that his seniors at the paper really wanted him to get a more violent response. The representative was shocked and called the interview off. However the story made the news and thankfully no Muslims took the bait and the Aussie-version of the Danish cartoon controversy was avoided. The issue died the next day.

There’s a period in the year when the media goes totally loose on attacking Muslims. It’s when Parliament closes and they go into a slow news period. Its called ‘Muslim season’ and it’s from around September till February. It happened last year - first Howard’s comments about Muslims being antagonistic to the Australian way of life, then Peter Costello saying that some Muslims should go home and Donna Vale terrorising Australia into believing that Muslims planned to over-populate Australia in 50 years time. Then there was Bronwyn Bishop talking about banning the hijab. All this was topped off with the Cronulla riots. And it again is happening this year. Thankfully we have the election period coming up so his will be great for Howard to capitalise on Muslims in the lead up to that time.

However Muslims have realised that their voice in the mainstream media is almost unheard. While there is plenty of space for analysts and politicians to talk about Muslims, there isn’t much room for Muslims to speak. They have started using the alternative media to show the other side of the story – a side the mainstream would rather ignore. In September 3CR launched a new weekly Muslim show, the National Security Files, the only place where we can freely hear Muslim voices on the radio.

By Mohammed El-leissy, co-presenter of the National Security Files

* Us and Them by Peter Manning (Random House 2006). PP30 +31