2017 ISLAM IN THE MEDIA - OnePath Network...OnePath Network Isla n the Meda 2017 5 For the entire...

1OnePath Network | Islam in the Media 2017

2 0 1 7 A Y E A R I N R E V I E W :

O N E P A T H N E T W O R K . C O M

ISLAM IN THE MEDIA

2 OnePath Network | Islam in the Media 2017

OnePath Network is Australia’s first and largest Islamic original

content video production studio and media outlet. Based

in Sydney, Australia, it was established in February 2014 as

a not-for-profit organisation. With rising Islamophobia and

misconceptions about Islam, a small group of young Muslims

decided it was time that the Australian Muslim community was

given a voice.

Our network has now grown to reach across the globe, with

content being viewed hundreds of millions of times, and winning

local and international awards.

C O P Y R I G H T © B Y O N E P A T H N E T W O R K , 2 0 1 8


ContentsExecutive Summary ..................................................................................................... 4

The Most Overblown Events of the Year ...................................................... 8The War on Terror ........................................................................................................................................... 10

Yassmin Abdel-Magied ................................................................................................................................ 11

Punchbowl Boys High School ................................................................................................................. 12

Flinders St. Tragedy ....................................................................................................................................... 13

Same Sex Jihad ................................................................................................................................................ 13

Why our Standards for Journalists Are Too Low .................................. 14

Is our Fear of Islam Rational? ..............................................................................16

Moving Forward ........................................................................................................... 20

Appendices ......................................................................................................................22


THE RESULTS OF OUR YEAR LONG ANALYSIS OF ISLAM IN THE MEDIA


For the entire year of 2017, OnePath Network tracked how

5 of Australia’s biggest newspapers reported on Islam.

We wanted to see exactly how the media portrayed the

2.6% of the Australian population that identify as Muslim,

and whether or not journalists and columnists were fair in

their coverage.

To do this, we used the ProQuest Australia and New

Zealand Newsstream database, which converts the

daily newspapers of all major publications in the region

into searchable text. Focusing on 5 newspapers owned

by Rupert Murdoch’s company News Ltd., namely The

Australian, The Daily Telegraph, The Herald Sun, The

Courier Mail and The Advertiser, we used boolean

operators to find all articles that referred to Islam or

Muslims alongside words like violence, extreme, terror

or radical (all terms included variations, i.e. islamIST,

terrorISM etc.)

This is what we found.

Around 604,000Australians, oraround 2.6% ofthe population,

Identify as Muslim.


Whilst it isn’t exactly news that newspapers like The Daily Telegraph

and The Australian talk about Islam a lot, what is really shocking

is just how much they do it. We found almost 3000 articles that

referred to Islam or Muslims alongside words like violence,

extremism, terrorism or radical

That’s over 8 articles a day in the Murdoch press slamming

Muslims. If all of those were put together, that would be a full

double-page spread. Every single day.

We also found 152 front pages over the year that featured Islam

in some negative capacity. A lot of the time, these articles and

exclusives were the featured item, the most important story for

selling the newspaper.

When we looked more closely, we saw that certain names came

up time and time again, as they have been for almost 2 decades.

We analysed 6 of the most controversial commentators in The

Australian news media, including figures like Andrew Bolt, Miranda

Devine and Janet Albrechtsen. On average, 31% of their opinion

pieces were devoted to Islam, with the overwhelming majority of

them being negative and divisive in nature. For Jennifer Oriel, that

number was 54%. Even though they are opinions, pieces such as

these encourage and promote ideals that could be threatening to

a minority community.

152Front-PagesAbout Islam

2891Negative Articles

Written About Islam

In every statistic we found, from negative

articles to front-page features to audience

write-ins, we came to the same conclusion: the

way the media talks about Islam in Australia is

disproportionate, divisive and dangerous.


ALL THE DAYS ISLAM MADE THE FRONT PAGE IN THE MURDOCH PRESS

# OF NEGATIVE ARTICLES WRITTEN EVERY MONTH IN THE MURDOCH PRESS

Jan1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

500

550

600

650

700

750

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec


THE MOST OVERBLOWN EVENTS OF THE YEAR


Whilst a general overview clearly shows just how

disproportionate the negative coverage of Islam is, it’s

only when you zoom in and see the actual issues that

the obsessive and unnecessary nature of the coverage

becomes clear.

And it wasn’t just about terrorism. Many of the most

absurd and overblown examples of coverage come from

issues that the Murdoch press highlighted by themselves,

dragging the rest of Australia into their worldview. Here’s

a couple of ridiculous highlights from a year of crazy

coverage.

There are enough negative articles written every day in the Murdoch

press to fill a two-page spread.


The War on TerrorWith the number of incendiary front-pages in 2017 about government

and police policy regarding terrorism, a casual observer would not

be faulted for thinking that Australia was actively engaged in daily

combat on its streets. In fact, it would hardly be surprising if that

was the perception in the offices of the Daily Telegraph and The

Australian.

Featuring front-page headlines like “This Means War” (Daily

Telegraph, July 17), “Enemy at the Gates” (March 3) and “In the

Firing Line” (May 22), The Daily Telegraph took great pains to terrify

its audience about the threat of terrorism in Australia. A number

of ‘exclusives’ claimed that “there is nothing stopping scores of

barbaric homegrown jihadists, including brutes waging war for

ISIS, from lawfully returning to the country” (Daily Telegraph, March

3), with “deadly extremists who have fought overseas.. roaming

our streets because frustrated authorities don’t have enough

evidence to put them behind bars” (Daily Telegraph, May 29), as

well as the news that “NSW police will now carry military-style

assault rifles on our streets to protect us from deranged terrorist

In reality though, these ‘exclusives’ referred to

the opinions of a small number of politicians and

analysts and were in no way proportionate to any

actual threat to the Australian people.


Yassmin Abdel-MagiedAfter a heated discussion on the ABC’s February 13 Q&A program,

in which Yassmin Abdel-Magied claimed that Islam was “the most

feminist religion”, the Sudanese-Australian engineer and activist

has been endlessly scrutinised by News Ltd. owned media. Over

200 articles have been dedicated to commenting on everything

from her role as an ABC presenter, to her twitter feed, to her recent

move to London.

In April, she also made an infamous post on her Facebook page,

saying “LEST.WE.FORGET. (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine….)”,

using the phrase commonly associated with ANZAC day and

remembrance of national values to bring attention to the crises of

war and refugees both near and abroad.

The post appeared only on her personal

Facebook page, and was taken down and retracted

within an hour.

That, however, didn’t stop the post being highlighted and

sensationalised as much as possible, with 5 front pages and over

100 articles in News Ltd. newspapers describing the comments as

“offensive” (Daily Telegraph, 27 April) a “real sin” (Herald Sun, 28 April)

and a “hateful… vile slur” (Daily Telegraph, 26 April). The coverage

drummed up immense anger and hatred on social media, with a

conservative commentator on radio station 2GB, Prue Macsween,

saying that she would be “tempted to run her over” if she saw her

on the street.


Punchbowl Boys High School was the target of a number of

supposed controversies throughout the year. The first came with

the dismissal of principal Chris Griffiths after allegedly refusing to

implement the state government’s deradicalisation program (Daily

Telegraph, 3 March).

Then came the incendiary headlines “Allah Allah Allah, Oi Oi

Oi” (Daily Telegraph, March 13) and “Behead of the Class” (Daily

Telegraph, March 16), which claimed the school was a hotbed of

radicalisation, with kids in year 5 “using religious language” and

“chanting the Koran”, implying that these were worrying examples

of indoctrination and extremism, as well as claiming the “infamous”

school was disrespecting women and police, and had Islam prayer

group bullies who supposedly targeted children who didn’t pray

(Daily Telegraph, 13 March).

Punchbowl Boys High School

To support their claims the Daily Telegraph

featured an interview with the replacement school

principal Robert Patruno, who contrary to the front

pages above, confirmed students were in fact

respecting their female teachers and that he had

found no evidence of Islamic State sympathisers

at the school (Daily Telegraph, 12 March).

With no sources or evidence for their claims (despite mass

scrutiny and a Department of Education ‘appraisal’), as well as a

new principal who disagreed with their many of their accusations,

The Daily Telegraph instead published a derogatory and offensive

opinion piece by renowned Islamophobe Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who said

regarding the school: “Whether it is in Raqqa or Punchbowl the

Islamist strategy with regard to children is the same: indoctrinate

them, prevent critical thinking, then accept and implement sharia

law” (Daily Telegraph, 27 March).


On December 21, a Melbourne man drove his car through the

crowds on one of Melbourne’s busiest roads, injuring 20 people.

2 days later, a number of News Ltd. papers seized on a report that

the driver had mumbled something about Allah and ASIO, and The

Herald Sun, The Daily Telegraph, The Courier Mail and The Australian

all ran “ALLAH RANTS” on their front pages.

What all 4 papers failed to mention on the front page was that the

driver had a history of mental illness and drug use.

When the debate over allowing same-sex marriage in Australia was

at its peak in September, The Daily Telegraph featured the headline

“Same-Sex Jihad” on the front page, claiming that “Sydney’s Islamic

leaders have launched a jihad against same-sex marriage” (Daily

Telegraph, 19 September).

The story referred to three community figures, with unsubstantiated

claims about sermons by the Grand Mufti Dr. Ibrahim Abdallah, as

well as a number of sensationalised quotes by Keysar Trad.

This particular report, which was not found in any other newspaper

or publication, stunk of an attempt to mock the Muslim community

on this issue, as well as paint Muslims as outsiders in this debate

whose views were not welcome.

Flinders St. Tragedy

Same-Sex Jihad

There was no credible link whatsoever

between the man’s actions and his identity as a

Muslim.


OUR STANDARDS AND EXPECTATIONS OF JOURNALISTS ARE TOO LOW


Media coverage of Islam does not exist in a vacuum of facts and

objectivity. The reality is, print news is a struggling industry, and a

very effective method for selling newspapers is fear, sensation and

drama. The more that these methods are normalised, the more

they will be used against anybody who the media paints as the

next ‘enemy’ of ‘Australian values’. As Charles Morton from Victoria

Police Media put it,

At the end of the day, they want to shift

newspapers.

what is not said and/or written is equally

powerful because of the ideological role it plays.

It is simply naive to think that journalists don’t have a choice in

what they choose to talk about, and that those choices don’t have

consequences on the public’s perception.

This is not just an issue of bias or exaggeration in individual reports.

As we found in our research, the overwhelming scale of association

between Islam and terror, extremism, violence, and oppression

through phrasing and word choice is far more significant than any

isolated events or reports. If 2891 articles include the phrase

“Islamic terrorism” or “Muslim oppression”, those ideas stick.

This is coupled with stereotypical pictures and images on front-

pages and feature stories that are prominently shown in order to

sell more papers. These images have been shown to significantly

shape the way Islam and Muslims are framed in the public eye

(Ewart 2017). In fact there have been a high number of incidents in

which images have had to be withdrawn and apologies made for

incorrect associations with events. Many newspapers seem to have

a policy of “show the face, apologise later.” This kind of approach

not only affects public perceptions, it has serious ramifications on

the individuals that these papers choose to ‘name and shame’,

whether correctly or not.

However, what is said and shown is only one aspect of the equation.

As Thomas Huckin points out,

of People Globally Want

Unbiased News

Pew Research Center, 2018

75%


OUR FEAR OF ISLAM IS NOT BASED ON AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE RELIGION


In 2016, an Essential Report poll found that 49% of Australians supported a ban on

Muslim immigration to Australia.

Another poll by the Australian National University found that 71% of Australians were concerned about the rise of Islamic

extremism locally.

In the same year however, researchers at Griffith University found that 70% of Australians believed that they themselves

knew “little to nothing about the religion

and its adherents” (O’Donnell 2017), despite the disproportionate coverage of Islam and Muslims in the media shown above.

49%

of Australians Support a Ban

on Muslim Immigration


It takes a special kind of fear mongering and sensationalism

to convince the majority of a nation to ban a community they

themselves recognise they know almost nothing about. It is simply

naive to ignore the serious role the media plays in making Muslims

seem ‘different’ to the rest of Australian society. As Anne Aly, an

academic and MP for Cowan, put it:

In 2017, the Islamophobia Register Australia published the report

Islamophobia in Australia: 2014-2016, which found “an observable

coincidence between spikes of vilification reported to the

Islamophobia Register and terror attacks, anti-terror legislation and

negative media coverage of high profile Muslim leaders” (Iner 2017),

such as the with the case of the Grand Mufti. It also showed that

the majority of Islamophobic insults were not related to terrorism,

meaning that simply the existence and visibility of Muslims and

Islam is now the main motivation behind these hate attacks. Aly

also noted that

In the popular Australian media… Muslims

have been characterized as non-members of the

Australian community – relegating them to the

space of the ‘other’, alien, foreign and incompatible

with Australian cultural values.

attempts by Muslims to articulate their views

and opinions in the popular media often draw

opposition from the public about accommodating

the needs of Muslims.

This can clearly be seen in the case of Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s

infamous Q&A appearance and ANZAC day post, or in the debates

surrounding Halal food.

In other words, whether Muslims stay silent and take the heat,

or ‘play the game’ and push back, the result is the same: public

animosity and resentment of Islam in Australia.

71%

of Australians are concerned about Isamic

Extremism


In 2016, 2,886 Australians died in relation to suicide, whilst 0

people died from a terrorist attack on Australian soil. Yet in the

2017 budget, the federal government allocated $7.2 million to the

ANZ Counter-Terrorism Committee, and only $2.1 million to suicide

prevention and awareness. That is not to take away from the work

that our police and intelligence agencies do to keep us safe. But it’s

essential that we remember that our beliefs as a society do not just

affect how we view or treat the individuals around us. They shape

government policy, institutional agendas and cultural norms. And

those things have a far greater power to harm a community that is

already struggling to find its place in Australian society.

Even to someone who has spent years working

with Muslim communities to defend against anti-

Muslim hate, the findings of this new study are

astounding.

That approximately 70% of Australians have little

to no knowledge of Islam and Muslims, yet are

concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism

locally, demonstrates how disturbingly influential

tabloid journalism is in Australia. It’s time

Australians acknowledge these publications for

what they really are--tabloid journalism aimed

at preying on irrational fears of the unknown and

sensationalising isolated incidents to increase

profits. These practices show a complete lack of

social and professional responsibility and create

real safety risks for the vast majority of Australian

Muslims who want nothing more than to build a

peaceful life for themselves and their families.”

Brice Hamack, Islamophobia Register of Australia

70%

of Australians believe that

they themselves know “little to nothing about

the religion and its adherents


MOVING FORWARD


If 2017 taught us anything, it’s that we have a serious lack of faith in

journalism, and for good reason. A Pew Poll in January 2018 found

that whilst people around the world “overwhelmingly agree that the

news media should be unbiased… many [say] their media do not

deliver.” We are grappling with the critical question of what ethical

journalism really is, and so far we haven’t found the answer. All we

do know is that the current approach is not working.

There are certain actions we can all take that will benefit our

situation. Building relationships between communities is one of the

most effective ways to ensure that we do the right thing by each

other. For journalists and media outlets, that means any coverage

that alienates or dehumanises a community is simply bad reporting,

and needs to be avoided. Strong relationships at an individual

and organisational level allow legitimate voices to be heard, and

legitimate issues to be addressed.

For everyone else, that means a better understanding of where and

how we get our news.

We need toeducate our-

selves about the current media

landscape, and take control of where and how

we get our news.

If we know the difference between a

trustworthy story and an untrustworthy story,

the financial and political incentive for fake news

drastically decreases. When we hold the media to

a higher standard, they will have no choice but to

meet it.


APPENDIX AAUTHOR PROFILES


Total Opinion Piecesin Murdoch Media

# of Opinion Piecesabout Islam

Rita Panahi



Andrew Bolt



Janet Albrechtsen



Greg Sheridan



Jennifer Oriel



Miranda Devine

0 50 100 150 200

0 10 20 30 40 50

0 20 40 60 80 100 120

0 10 20 30 40 50

0 100 200 300 400 500

0 20 40 60 80 100 120

19%

64%

25%

35%

33%

27%


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