
2,891 Murdoch Media Stories Trashing Islam in a Single Year, Study Reveals - colinprince
https://newmatilda.com/2018/03/03/2891-murdoch-stories-trashing-islam-single-year-study-reveals/
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manfredo
So about 8 per day distributed across 5 media outlets.

It's also important to highlight the article's last two paragraphs as it
constrasts significantly with the tone of the headline:

> Articles were regarded as “negative articles written about Islam”, if they
> “referred to Islam or Muslims alongside words like violence, extremism,
> terrorism or radical”. It should be noted – this is a pretty expansive
> definition. A story that accurately reported a noteworthy incident of Muslim
> violence, without being inflammatory or misrepresenting material facts, and
> which had the respectful cooperation of Muslims, would still be caught up
> under this definition.

> Indeed, the definition could go further. A report that noted Muslim women in
> a non-government organisation helping victims of domestic violence might
> also be caught up under this definition. It should also be noted – there is
> an implicit slippage, in the sense that a negative story about Muslims isn’t
> necessarily a story about Islam. Thus, I would argue that the definition may
> be overbroad.

Edit: Originally, I erroneously wrote that this was 8 per day across all
Murdoch owned outlets. That is not the case, it is among 5 specific ones.

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zinckiwi
About 8 per day too many, no?

~~~
bobthechef
Wouldn't that depend on accuracy? You're assuming here that all negative press
for Islam is necessarily evil, which is false. Negative press isn't the same
as bigotry.

Incidentally, I would be interested in the amount of negative coverage, say,
the Catholic Church gets in the media as a point of comparison, perhaps
especially in the left-leaning media.

~~~
manicdee
Just because you present the facts doesn’t mean you aren’t biased.

Note the focus of some of these articles on individual incidents in a civil
war, for example a particular group of predominantly Muslims killing a lot of
Christians on a particular day. The reporter neglects to cover the other six
days of the week when many more Muslims were killed by this group.

Is that fair coverage? Does it appear to be accurate? Is it negative about
Islam?

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falcrist
> A story that accurately reported a noteworthy incident of Muslim violence,
> without being inflammatory or misrepresenting material facts, and which had
> the respectful cooperation of Muslims, would still be caught up under this
> definition.

So, they're not separating factual reporting from fake news about islam? How
does this not _entirely_ invalidate the study?

Yes, islam gets discussed a lot... but islamist extremism is a global problem.
Calling criticism of islam "islamophobia" is incredibly counterproductive. The
more we try to clamp down on criticism of islam, the more we stoke anti-
islamist fears and hatreds.

This pisses me off as much as seeing people still defending convicted
pedophiles like George Pell because they're catholic clergy.

I get that people like their religions. That doesn't mean those religions
should be placed above reproach. We need to make a clear distinction between
criticism of islam and islamophobia. As far as I can see (since I refuse to
disable my anti-tracking and anti-ad plugins on a strange site) the study the
article is talking about doesn't do that.

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cabalamat
> Articles were regarded as “negative articles written about Islam”, if they
> “referred to Islam or Muslims alongside words like violence, extremism,
> terrorism or radical”. It should be noted – this is a pretty expansive
> definition.

One important question is how many of these stories are substancially true?

It is one thing to call for the suppression of false stories. It is another
thing entirely to call for the suppression of true stories.

Does this, then, mean that true stories are automatically OK? Not necessarily;
Weak men are Superweapons: [https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-
are-superweap...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-
superweapons/)

------
dosy
This goes right to the heart of the division we see today. The "endless state
of war" Orwell warned about in 1984, is not just wars between nations, or
proxy wars ~ we see it in the democratic systems as wars between factions of
the population.

The system has an incentive to never produce a victor, only to prolong the
conflict.

Much fighting in these wars occurs in social and traditional media, centered
around "battleground topics", the OP being a clear example.

The OP is an example of a message in the battleground topic of "Islam vs the
West" (aside: which is actually historically incorrect since Islam really can
be said to be closer to the West than separate from it, one reason is that
Islam revived Europe / Western civilization around the Mediterranean 1000
years ago [1]).

The OP article supports for the Islam side, one of many such articles. There
are also many articles supporting the West side of this battleground topic.

The system will not permit there to be a conclusion to the argument, it is
actually motivated to promote both sides, because this constant state of
conflict is stabilizing to the democratic systems.

[1]: read this book, [https://www.amazon.com/Why-West-Rules-Now-
Patterns/dp/031261...](https://www.amazon.com/Why-West-Rules-Now-
Patterns/dp/0312611692)

~~~
deogeo
Given that 1 million Europeans were kidnapped as slaves by Arabs, and both
Spain and Sicily having been conquered by Muslims, and how most of the
Yugoslavian region was called the "Military Frontier" for _three centuries_
due to the Ottoman incursions it had to guard against, how on Earth do you
arrive at "Islam vs the West" being historically inaccurate?

~~~
dosy
No offence, but it seems to me you want to see "Islam" and "the West" as a
conflict. Maybe that story of Islam and the West in conflict has been
manufactured, and your response (like many others') is desired by, and plays
into the hands of, those who benefit from manufacturing conflict.

~~~
yakshaving_jgt
How much of history do you believe is a fabrication? Do you believe the Battle
of Vienna possibly never happened?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vienna](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vienna)

~~~
dosy
I didn't say facts didn't happen. I said the stories we make of them are
optional.

I assume I know the same facts as you, and I choose a different
interpretation. But maybe that's not true, maybe the facts you and I know are
different.

If you read the entire book, I think you'll know why I say Islam is part of
the West, not versus it.

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TheSpiceIsLife
One potentially useful context would be how this compares to other religions.

A quick internet search tells me there are about 1.5 billion Muslims in the
world and about 2.19 billion Christians.

If we consider the amount of media attention the various catholic churches
have been receiving it isn't difficult to believe the number of "negative"
stories could be _much_ higher than ~3000 per year.

Does anyone know if this comparison has been done?

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j16sdiz
From the article

> It’s a shame that the study didn’t investigate other media more fully. ....
> Interestingly, though Fairfax has considerably less coverage of Muslims than
> the Murdoch press, it’s still pretty substantial, at over 100 every month.
> That is, over three negative stories every day at the less Islam-obsessed
> Fairfax. ...

I hate this kind of "study". It is impossible to put them in context.

\- Are those media generally negative toward everything, or just Islam?

\- How many Islam stories do they publish?

\- How many positive Islam stories do they publish?

\- How many are objective facts? How many are commentary?

\- How does this number compare to, let's say, Christian / Scientology /
science etc?

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cimmanom
It’d be interesting to see the numbers from another media conglomerate for
comparison.

~~~
ceejayoz
The subheadline says "And before you Fairfax readers say ‘I told you so’, they
didn’t fare all that much better."

~~~
j16sdiz
I think the media are generally negative towards everything, not just islam.
Negative story attracts more eyeballs.

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shitgoose
HN, is that you?:) When we touch on a slightly non-PC subject, we get slammed
immediately by moderators. Then you allow this??!!

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godzillabrennus
The credibility of the Imam of Peace being called into question is a new thing
for me. I follow him on social media and find his overall message to be
uplifting and positive.

This post questions his title and Wikipedia states he's a self proclaimed
Imam. His website seems to reference some authorities claiming hes legit:
[https://imamtawhidi.com/licenses/](https://imamtawhidi.com/licenses/)

He's far from perfect in all of his messaging but overall his messages are
positive.

