Deconstructing Colonialism in the Media: Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Bias in Mainstream News Media

By Fareed Khan (Founder, Canadians United Against Hate)

 

The following is based on a presentation on racism in the media delivered at the “Dismantling Colonialism” conference on behalf of Canadians United Against Hate, organized by the Canadian Congress on Inclusive Diversity and Workplace Equity on January 20 & 21, 2022.

The era of political colonialism may have ended in the post-World War II period, as European colonies in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and Asia gained independence, but the repercussions of colonialism continue to be felt today.  In western nations, which have allowed large scale immigration from former colonial territories, the repercussions of colonialism continue to negatively impact racialized communities, and they continue to affect society at large in harmful ways.

 

Colonial ways of thinking, including the racism that accompanies them, are evident in all aspects of Canadian society, and one of those aspects is mainstream media. Racism in the media is a topic about which there has been considerable academic research, and given the many facets of the issue this discussion will only scratch its surface, and will focus primarily on how biased or racist media has impacted  Muslims.

 

Media has immense power to shape societies.  It has been the case historically, and it is even more so since the start of the broadcast media era, the era of cable news networks, and now during the digital media era.

 

It should be noted that colonial systems, whether in Canada or elsewhere, are inextricably linked to genocide, slavery and white supremacy.  Settler colonial societies like Canada are founded on these ugly realities, whether or not Canadians want to admit it, and it is because this nation is rooted in that history that racism is endemic.  It is also why the human rights of racialized people have been violated repeatedly since before Confederation and into the 21st century, not just by racist elements in society but also by governments.

 

Furthermore, this means that the public and private institutions that built Canada were in turn founded on policies rooted in Indigenous genocide, slavery and white supremacy, and the racism that accompanied them.  While society has evolved and continues to evolve, and there are efforts by social justice organizations and political actors to mitigate how we are all affected by this history, we cannot deny the fact that this is a reality on the ground, and that racism is part of the DNA of all major institutions in this country.

 

As much as politics and capitalism shaped this nation so has media, at times hand in glove with governments and politicians.  If asked, experts who study media would say without hesitation that racism has been and continues to be part of the media ecology, particularly within right wing media.  All you need to do is look at mainstream news and entertainment media to realize this.  Examples abound of instances where media has enabled hate and racism, with FOX News in the US and the tabloid press in the UK being prime examples.  In addition, with major media outlets led by senior executives who are primarily white men, this should not be surprising.  This is not to say that these men are deliberately racist, just that they work in systems defined by racism and white privilege, and are often unwilling to dismantle the racist foundations on which the systems in which they work are built.

 

If there is one facet of media that has shaped 20th Century society it is Hollywood-based entertainment media which has been involved in promoting racist stereotypes since its inception.  From racist portrayals of Black people, East Asians, and Indigenous Americans, you will find an abundance of Hollywood fare that conveys racist messaging and stereotypes.

 

One racialized minority group that has been the target of racist Hollywood productions for more than century are Arabs, and by extension Muslims.

 

 

In 2001 American academic Jack Shaeen released a ground-breaking book titled “Reel Bad Arabs” which dissected Hollywood’s slanderous history in its portrayal of Arabs and Muslims dating from cinema's earliest days to contemporary Hollywood blockbusters.  The book was turned into a documentary in 2006, which reviewed more than 1000 films featuring Arab and Muslim characters since the start of the Hollywood film industry.  Its message was that Hollywood has vilified Arabs and Muslims and portrayed them through a racist lens since the start of the film industry, thereby implanting racist stereotypes about these communities into the minds of the public.

This conclusion was reinforced in a 2018 report that detailed how Hollywood films and TV shows have demonized Muslims and the Islamic faith.  This report was only one among many reports and studies over the last two decades that have highlighted the existence of anti-Muslim bigotry and anti-Arab racism in Hollywood.

In recent decades all you have to do is look at some of the films and TV shows coming out of Hollywood, including blockbuster films, where Arabs and Muslims have been dehumanized and are only seen as terrorists, violent extremist thugs, or in the case of Muslim women, people that need to be saved from the uncivilized culture in which they live.

 

Films like Executive Decision, True Lies, The Siege, and Iron Man wove violent Muslim characters into the stories as villains, and didn't make any differentiation between their villains and the vast majority of Muslims who are peaceful.  Then there are long-running TV series like Homeland and 24 which made a point of making Muslims recurring villains over multiple seasons.  These are only a handful of the Hollywood products where Muslims and Arabs are consistently cast as the enemy bent on destroying democracy and the West.  Let us think about what this does to a public fed on this imagery year after year, how they respond when they encounter Muslims in their lives, and let us consider the impact that repeated negative stereotypes of Muslims promoted in the guise of entertainment has on society at large. 

 

However, despite the history of Hollywood vilifying Muslims and their faith, it is news media that by far has done the greatest damage in feeding the beast of Islamophobia.

 

Since long before the 9/11 terrorist attacks western news media portrayed the Muslim world and by extension Muslims in a negative light.  We first started seeing it during and after the Arab-Israeli war in 1967.  It escalated during the OPEC oil shock of the early and mid 1970s, continued during the Iranian revolution and hostage crisis, and we continued seeing Islamophobic news headlines and stories throughout the 1980s, in the lead up to and following the Gulf War, and throughout the 1990s.

 

With the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington DC the floodgates of anti-Muslim media portrayals opened wide.  While there was research available at the time that received media coverage highlighting the role that news media played in fanning anti-Muslim hate, it was generally ignored by producers, editors and news executives because there were ratings and profits in telling stories laced with anti-Muslim prejudice.

 

 

This story in Pundit magazine was published in the days following the 9/11 attacks.  It talked about the hypocrisy of mainstream media outlets which condemned anti-Muslim hate crimes that surged in the wake of 9/11, while at the same time their Islamophobic media coverage of the attack spread fear through western Muslim communities and in effect terrorized them.  The terminology used in media stories took the actions of a handful of extremists who were Muslim and blamed all 1.6 billion followers of the Islamic faith for the crimes they committed.  Pejorative terms like “Islamic terrorism”, “Muslim terrorist”, and “Jihadist” were interchangeably used in headlines and news stories, and in the process stigmatized Muslims living in the west.  This prejudicial and racist media coverage continued in stories about the Afghanistan War, the Iraq War, the War on Terror, and any story related to violent attacks involving Muslims.  Such xenophobic coverage fed the anti-Muslim hate that has become in many ways normalized in Canada and other western countries.

 

Furthermore, when you get discussions on major news shows with headlines like this from a CNN interview with Iranian-American academic Reza Aslan, along with anti-Muslim rants in the echo chamber of right-wing talk radio, it is no wonder that a majority of the public has negative attitudes towards Muslims, and why Muslims feel threatened in their communities.

 

These negative media portrayals are likely part of the reason why nearly half of Canadians said they had unfavourable views of Islam and Muslims in an Angus Reid poll conducted in 2017 only months after the Quebec City mosque shooting.

 

The British tabloid press is also notorious for its Islamophobic headlines which convey messaging that says anything related to Muslims is something to be feared and hated.  Such headlines and stories are reminiscent of stories and editorial cartoons about Jews in German newspapers and magazines in the 1920s and 1930s. 

 

The dehumanization that occurs when the public repeatedly sees such headlines and stories about a minority community is one of the factors that contributes to public perceptions that the targeted community is an enemy.

 

 

Displayed are two magazine covers which are also negative and racist in their portrayal of Muslims.  On the left is one from Charlie Hebdo, a notoriously  Islamophobic French publication, where the cartoon implies that the prophet of Islam was a pedophile.  While on the right is a very controversial cover from The New Yorker magazine where Barack Obama is portrayed in traditional Muslim attire. The implication being that Obama was a secret Muslim and therefore was unfit to be president. While magazine editors claimed the cover was meant to be satirical the cover was condemned by the Obama campaign as “tasteless and offensive”.

 

 

Media bias is also evident in the way attacks by Al-Qaeda and ISIS inspired terrorists have been covered compared to the way that attacks against Muslims have been covered.  The Globe and Mail is no stranger to this type of bias, as is evident in their coverage of the  Boston Marathon bombing when compared to coverage of the  Quebec City mosque shooting.  The coverage of the Boston attack, an event on US soil where two people were killed, received a full banner headline on the front page.  While the attack at the Quebec City mosque where six Canadian Muslims were murdered received only a column of coverage on the front page.

Another example of the bias of Globe and Mail editors was evident following the terrorist attacks on two New Zealand mosques.

 

On March 15, 2019 a white supremacist gunman walked into two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand spraying the worshippers with gunfire. The day after the shooting the cover of the Globe and Mail showed a full-page illustration of Finance Minister Bill Morneau rather than focussing on the horrific attack where 51 Muslim worshippers were murdered and another 40 were seriously injured.

 

Another example of biased coverage is evident in these headlines of the Orlando nightclub shooting where the perpetrator of is referred to as a “maniac”, whereas coverage of the New Zealand mosque shooter refers to him as an “angelic boy".  The prejudice and racist and mindset of the editors is apparent in how they framed each story.

 

The reality is that Muslims have been under assault by a racist media  establishment for decades.  Another example of this is that Muslims who are merely accused of plotting violence (but don't act on it) receive 700% more negative media coverage than white supremacists and right wing extremists who actually commit acts of violence resulting in death.

 

The institutional media bias is clear, and it is fed at times at by political narratives pushed by conservative politicians who paint Muslims as enemies.  This is the case with the Quebec government and its Bill 21 secularism law which, while it affects all racialized religious minorities, was meant to specifically target Muslims.  In doing this Quebec is taking a page from France, a nation which has adopted some of the strongest anti-Muslim policies of any western democracy, rooted in fascism and the worst kind of racism.  Islamophobia in Canada was also fed by the policies of the Stephen Harper government and enabled by his right wing media allies in the Post Media chain while he was prime minister.

 

The bias and racism experienced by Muslims at the hands of the media has also been felt by other racialized communities. If we consider media coverage around the Black Lives Matter movement, the way that media has covered police shootings of Black people, or the way that media in Canada has covered disruptive protests by Indigenous people, they show the same negative and prejudiced approach to covering those stories as is the case in stories involving Muslims. 

 

An example of racist media coverage of stories involving Indigenous people is demonstrated by comparing the number of critical news stories in 2020 about Wet'suetan land defenders, who blockaded roads in BC, to the number of critical stories about violent mobs of white men who attacked Miqmaa fishers and their boats in Nova Scotia.  The sharp contrast in media coverage of peaceful protests by Indigenous people and violent attacks by a mob of white people could not be more clear.

 

In addition, here we have a cartoon that was published in a major newspaper in Missouri only days after George Floyd's murder by a white police officer.  It is clearly racist in its imagery and messaging.  The public reaction to this was intensely negative and it resulted in the editor and the publisher of the newspaper resigning, and the interim editor publishing an unreserved apology and retraction.  One thing this incident demonstrated was that an activist public, responding to racist news material, and making their voice heard, can make a difference to help change happen.

 

So what is the solution?  What can ordinary citizens do to change negative media narratives on issues related to racialized communities?  The first thing is to diversify news rooms and make sure that the people we see telling the stories reflect the diversity of Canada.  The second is to diversify the senior management of Canadian news media organizations so that those who make the decisions about the stories told -- the editors and executive producers -- are people who have lived experiences in diverse communities, and can push past the ingrained white privilege and white blindness that exists at the senior levels of far too many news organizations.  The third is to call out racist or xenophobic news stories or material, as in the case of the cartoon, where and when they happen.  Letting such stories and editorials stand without objection ends up inflaming racist attitudes and endangers racialized communities.  And a final recommendation is for news producers and editors to broadcast and publish more positive stories featuring racialized and marginalized communities so that the public is not fed a constant barrage of negative information and imagery of these communities.

 

The major structural changes at the executive level of news media companies are not going to occur overnight.  It will require sustained activism, societal, and political pressure for such change to happen.  The colonial mindset of corporate and institutional leaders rooted in white privilege has existed for more than a century, and despite best efforts over the last few decades change has been far too slow.  Despite the challenges efforts to decolonize media institutions needs to continue if newsrooms and their news products are to reflect Canada's diversity.

 

Being non-racist and passive in our approach to racism in society is not enough to undo the legacies of racism, white supremacy, slavery and Indigenous genocide that are part of the societal and cultural DNA of this country.  For meaningful change to take place, to undo all the damage done by these legacies, we must commit ourselves to being actively and uncompromisingly anti-racist in our words and our deeds.  This is the only path before us if we want to have the accepting, diverse and inclusive society that the vast majority of Canadians desire.

 

  

© 2022 The View From Here.  © 2022 Fareed Khan.  All rights reserved.