Text of a talk given at a conference on Islam and the media, Central London Mosque, 20 June, 2002.

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Brian Whitaker, Middle East Editor, The Guardian

It is difficult to talk about the coverage of Islam in the British press without also discussing the effects of September 11. I have spoken to many people who feel that September 11 has had a very negative effect on the Muslim community in Britain, and I know that many hold the media at least partly responsible for this.

We could spend a lot of time discussing the negative effects, but rather than dwell on that, I want to suggest that September 11 has also created an opportunity for British Muslims.

I’ll begin with some figures. This is a computer search for articles containing the word "Muslim" that appeared in the national dailies during a 12-month period which ended in early last September - in other words, before the attacks in the United States.

(Note: some papers use the spelling "Moslem", and this is included in the totals.)

Newspaper	Total
Guardian	817
Independent	681
Times	535
Telegraph	417
Mail	202
Mirror	164
Express	139
Sun	80
Star	40

How can we explain these differences?

1) Most references to Muslims in the newspapers appear in an international context rather than a British one. The broadsheet newspapers at the top of the list contain more itnernational news, and therefore more references to Muslims.

A survey a couple of years ago found that 85% of mentions in the Guardian and the Times were in a non-British context. My own rather hasty research, covering a single week, found that about 55% of references were in an international context. Obviously the level varies according to what is happening at an particular time.

2) The Guardian and the Independent appear at the top of the list. I suggest this is because they tend to take more interest than the Times and the Telegraph in minority groups generally - not just Muslims -.

3) There also seems to be a perception among the popular tabloid papers that Islam is not a subject which interests their readers. But there are also some big differences among the tabloids: the Mirror talks about Muslims twice and much as the Sun, while the Sun talks about them twice as much as the Daily Star.

Now let us see how this has changed as a result of September 11. Here are the counts for a 12-month period ending yesterday (June 19):

Newspaper	Total	Increase
Guardian	2,043	250%
Independent	1,556	228%
Times	1,486	278%
Telegraph	1,176	282%
Mail	650	322%
Mirror	920	561%
Express	305	219%
Sun	526	658%
Star	144	360%

These changes are very dramatic. Typically, the increase in references to Muslims among the broadsheet papers is around 250-280 per cent. But in the case of the Mirror it’s 561% and for the Sun 658%.

We can draw two conclusions from this.

Firstly, newspaper readers are far more aware of Islam now than they were a few months ago (though, of course, these particular figures don’t tell us anything about the quality of the information they have been getting).

Secondly, journalists are writing about Islam far more than they were a few months ago. To do this, they have largely had to educate themselves. I remember on period towards the end of last year when just about everybody in our office who had anything to do with the coverage of Afghanistan was reading Ahmed Rashid’s book on the Taliban.

Because of my own job writing about the Middle East, I now get two or three other journalists coming to me each week with queries about Islam. Sometimes they want to check facts for a story. Sometimes they come with complaints from readers and want to know if there’s any substance in the complaint. I have certainly noticed a big increase in this sort of thing since September 11.

When I said earlier that there is an opportunity here, what I meant is that there is more interest in Islam among non-Muslims in Britain than ever before. Depending on how this is handled, it can either work to the detriment of Muslims or to their advantage.

If it is to work to their advantage, then Muslims must play a part in helping to educate journalists about Islam and in ensuring that the coverage is both fair and accurate.

WHAT ARE THE AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT?

1. My own personal observation is that problems occur less often with ordinary news reporters than with feature writers and columnists who tend to be strong on opinions but pay less attention to the facts.

2. There are at least four very persistent stereotypes that crop up time and again in different articles. These tell us that Muslims are:

(a) intolerant;
(b) misogynistic;
(c) violent or cruel;
(d) strange or different.

Under the "intolerant" heading we find words such as stern, severe, harsh, puritanical. The last thing you would expect Muslims to do is laugh, enjoy themselves or tell jokes.

The image of violence and cruelty is not just related to terrorism:

RSPCA HONOURS EXPRESS REPORTING Daily Express, June 30, 2001 The Daily Express will today scoop a top award for its campaigns against animal cruelty. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is to give us its National Media award for 2000. The citation describes the award as for "an outstanding and sustained contribution to the field of animal welfare". The RSPCA cites a string of articles and campaigns in the Daily Express including the suffering of exotic pets such as iguanas through the ignorance of their owners, the need to protect Britain's porpoises and dolphins, and a graphic account of the cruel slaughter of British sheep in Paris to celebrate the Moslem festival of Eid el Kebir.

The idea that Muslims are strange or different crops up in all sorts of places. For example, you find travel articles describing some exotic place where the sound of "wailing" can be heard coming from the mosque. In travel articles about Muslim countries you’ll find many of the attitudes and cliches that were condemned many years ago in Edward Said’s book, Orientalism.

3. We tend to write about Muslims mainly when they cause trouble. The negative stories often come from other countries but obviously they have some effect on readers’ perception of Muslims in Britain. We can do our best to handle these stories sensitively, but we can’t stop writing them. What we can do is balance the negative coverage with what the Americans would call "affirmative action". In other words, we can make a point of writing about Muslims, at least some of the time, in a non-violent, non-threatening context.

4. There is a lot of ignorance about basic facts regarding Islam, and I’ll give you two examples that cropped up in the Guardian. One - in the education section of all places - described the Kaba in Mecca as the Prophet’s tomb. Another, in a reader’s letter, explained the hadith as "the sayings of the Prophet in the Koran" - which to anyone who knows anything about the Koran is an obvious contradiction.

5. The Mail and Express spell Muslim as "Moslem" to "Muslim", and several others spell Qur’an as K-O-R-A-N. This may seem a relatively trivial issue, but there’s no good reason for these perverse spellings and it’s a sign of disrespect if you don’t try to spell them properly.

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

1. COMPLAINING

• Stereotypes are self-perpetuating unless people challenge them. Once they are challenged, writers start to back off, or at least start to qualify them a bit.

• Demand correction of factual errors. If complaining about the use of words, be prepared to suggest alternative terminology.

• Don’t try to censor opinions, but engage in debate - through letters to the editor or directly with the writers concerned - if you think this will be productive. Some people respond to that, but in some cases it’s a waste of time.

• Effective complaining requires organisation, both to monitor what is published and to ensure that complaints are formulated in the best way.

2. EMPLOYMENT

There are clearly not enough Muslims working in journalism. There are all sorts of possible explanations for this apart from discrimination - for example, the tendency of sons in Asian families to follow in their father’s business, or the perception of journalism as a somewhat alcoholic profession. (That’s probably not true any more, because it’s quite difficult to drink and drive a computer at the same time.)

Whatever the reasons, we must do something about it. Over the last few years, most newspapers have made serious efforts to recruit black journalists, and we should do the same for Muslims. We should also learn from the mistakes made when papers first started employing black journalists - in particular, we should avoid the "ghetto effect" of asking Muslims to write mainly about Islam.

3. EDUCATION

Finally, as I mentioned earlier, many journalists have had to take a crash course in Islam since September 11. For the most part, it’s been a hit-and-miss affair, and we need something better.

This is one area where the Muslim community can work with the media. What we need as a simple, factual guide to the things journalists should know about Islam, together with a list of the most common mistakes. We also need some guidelines for best practice, similar to those that were developed for reporting racial issues a few years ago.

I know that the Muslim Council of Britain is already looking into this, but the sooner it’s ready, the better for all of us.

20 June 2002