Why islam is negatively portrayed in western media
Islam is one of three abrahamic religions, alongside christianity, and judaism. Christianity and judaism are arguably the most similar religions to islam, and have similarly spread into western culture from their middle eastern and eurpean origins. Throughout the ages, each have had their drops in reputation, sectarian wars, and misunderstandings, which still carry on strongly today. With today's media however, being more widespread, easily accessible, sporadically based and cheaper than ever to use, any media target will get hit much harder than a target hit even just a decade ago. Since September 11, the muslim population has been in the spotlight by media outlets, and where reporting is, under a journalists code of conduct, supposed to be fair and balanced, it is qestionable why the vast majority of reports about islam and any muslim activities have been negative.
In contemporary reporting, there are facets that determine news coverage and what makes something news worthy; prominence, obscurity, timeliness, proximity and disaster. while islam is no new occurrence to the west, it's major impacts culturally and socially have only recently emerged. When the biggest, and arguably the most covered event in history is the World rade centre bombings, one of the obstacles for islam is that it has entered western awareness through a very problematic avenue. When an event such as the trade centre bombings occurs so suddenly, and massive amounts of people are killed, a potent mix of a need for timeliness, proximity, and most of all disaster, will command news authorities to very quickly narrow down to a culprit- with full edia force.
“bad news is good news. as is often obsrved, th ...