In a Media Wilderness

In the wake of the "Attack on America" one can’t help but feel like news has been gleaned from every corner of the earth, providing the public with a constant soup-opera to follow. Television news channels and talk shows, magazines, newspapers and the like have been fortunate to have plenty editorial at their disposal - and they certainly have disposed of it, and to the sickeningly highest degree. Not only that, but the perilous position of innocent Muslims in America has been gravely undermined.

Scanning the pages of any given newspaper, you can't help but stumble upon some article or other with reference to the World Trade Center or Osama bin Laden. It's beginning to get a little tedious; with newspapers draining every possible angle you can't really help but get peeved. Add to this some one sided stories and you can feel a nasty itch on your thumb as you flick the pages. Come on, has anyone seriously dealt with the more imminent issues of Muslims, or more acutely individuals of Arab decent in America. Conversations of racial profiling and intimidation being 'wrong' really don't cut it. What is needed are more stringent messages to the public that state this really isn't just. Many of the people being targeted aren't guilty, but they are being singled out like they are.

Is it right that a single male Pakistani Muslim should feel the need to move from his Queens home all the way to the deepest reaches of Long Island, purely on the basis of his ethnic origin, or religious persuasion? Well I know such a person; in fact, I lived with him. It is no joke, as many will understand, that Muslims' lives are in grave danger from certain individuals. What shall we refer to them as... thugs? Further to this, are all Muslims terrorists because some radical fundamentalists say that all Muslims should declare holy war on America, and it is their duty (in the words of Osama bin Laden, "because it says so in the Koran"; well his demonic translation of it anyway). If this is the case then all Catholics in the world must be terrorists on the basis of what the IRA inflict upon the United Kingdom. The answer is, of course, that Islam is not guilty, just like Catholicism isn't - it's isolated factions who belong to these, the Mother religions, that are implicit.

This type of racial profiling is, in part, a creation of the mass media whether they chose to accept it or not. Every day they present the news with a slant; it can be balanced, but more often than not it adopts a particular stance or veiwpoint. And often this results in bias, unparalleled stories - they are supposed to report the facts, but they sometimes become distorted or confused, or are dressed up in the costumes of euphemisms. At times they go beyond this, and are downright derogatory towards particular ethnic groups. That is what creates illusions within laymen: "individuals of African origin usually partake in these type of activities..." or "...this is typical of the Chinese culture." Although this may seem rather abstract, on closer examination you will find it is very simple: media interventions greatly influence the way people think. Newspapers are persuasive in that the writer is trying to win the reader over with their arguement. And they are successful much of the time, evidently. Perhaps this is an exaggeration, but the power of media, historically, has won over the masses. What is there to suggest that this isn't the case in contemporary society?

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