Our media. Our beacon of liberty.

One would think the purpose of journalism is to present facts or a description of events without an attempt at interpretation. Journalists owe the public the truth of what is happening in their communities and ought not to offer their political, moral or religious biases in their work. Should they compromise on this, they then undermine our knowledge base on issues that affect us directly which can lead to us making poor judgement calls on something, someone or some group.

A study into the media by the Greater London Authority (GLA) found that Muslims in Britain are often depicted as a threat to traditional British customs, values, and ways of life. It demonstrated how the media frequently distorts, exaggerates and oversimplifies facts and projects them using frequently emotive, immoderate, alarmist and abusive language.
 

Too often has the media given air time to characters who demonise Muslims, further holding that Muslim students are the ones who need to be tackled in order save our country from the clutches of Islamism. You type in Muslim Students in Google and second only to FOSIS is a sensationalist article on Timesonline entitled, A third of Muslim students back killings. Muslim students’ societies are not alien to articles that have been written on them, against them and often without even speaking to them. Therefore, it is not uncommon to hear considerable blame for Islamophobia pinned onto the media.

On the 5th November 2009 three Muslim students were attacked by a multi-ethnic gang outside their University. The attack was completely unprovoked and was the culmination of a sustained campaign of violent intimidation against Muslim students which had started few days earlier. Though this was a tragic and shocking incident it did not make more than a short column in mainstream newspapers. Why? Should it have been Muslim youths who violently attacked some non-Muslim students leaving the student bar, would the story have had more coverage? Why?
 

I understand journalists are ever more pressurised to produce stories at short notice and are often over loaded with information. Tight deadline are a fact of life, journalists needing to interview their sources and have written their stories by mid-afternoon to allow time to review and edit their taped interviews into a story.

The effect this has on a story can be enormous especially when you have a disengaged community, but this is no excuse for the journalists to compromise on the importance of the truth.
 

It’s not simply about presenting the truth it is also about fair and balanced reporting. These days it’s not too far fetched to say a terrorist is now synonymous with a Muslim which has been extremely disruptive to community cohesion throughout the UK. However, it is grossly disturbing that the media choose to play down and even ignore the threat posed by extremist non-Muslims on the rest of the society.
 

Consider the Lewington case; in July 2009 Neil Lewington, 44, being inspired by the Copeland bombings was convicted of terrorism and explosive offences. Even more recently on January 15th 2010, Terence Gavan, a former BNP member and activist and even more worryingly, a soldier, was convicted of manufacturing nail bombs and a staggering array of 54 explosives, 12 firearms and even a booby trapped cigarette packet to specifically target Muslims. However, the media opted to give air time to Mr Anjem Choudhary. Why?

These are just three stories and there has been a shocking rise in Islamophobic attacks which do not even make the news. On top of this there have been numerous counts of poor journalism which have damaged the lives of those reported on only for Newspapers to pay a ‘fine’ down the road.

Muslims continue to be presented as the aggressors and I don’t understand the rationale. What benefit could Newspapers reap from demonising a population of approximately 2 million, sowing and fermenting the seeds of Islamophobia? It doesn’t help foreign policy? It doesn’t help domestic policy? Or does it?