Media treatment of Muslims criticised

MELBOURNE — More than 150 people attended a lecture at Melbourne University by University of Technology Sydney journalism professor Peter Manning, on the treatment of Arabs and Muslims by the Australian media.

Manning, who conducted a comprehensive study of the Sydney Morning Herald and Daily Telegraph's representation of Arabs and Muslims in the year before and after the September 11 terrorist attacks, said that both papers painted "a portrait of sustained fear".

The study, published under the title "Dog whistle politics and Journalism", examined 12,000 newspaper articles and revealed that the media consistently portrayed Arabs and Muslims as violent, ungrateful and barely human.

Kim Bullimore

From Green Left Weekly, March 16, 2005.

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From GLW issue 619