Article 1
Headline: Quarter of the World is Muslim
Section: News
Written by: Jo Steele
Page: 27
Outline: This article focuses on a study conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life report and its findings that 1 in 4 people in the World are Muslim.
The article features quite prominently on page 27 and is accompanied by a colour map which highlights some of the key countries and their Muslim populations as a proportion of the total.
On the whole the article is presented in a very factual manner and details some of the statistics and ‘interesting’ facts i.e. that Muslims in countries where Islam is not the majority religion outnumber Muslims in some mainly Islamic countries.
In fact the article would have been a very strong candidate for a “Neutral” rating had it not been for Jo Steele injecting her own opinionated views into the story which firmly pushes this into “Negative” territory.
In the fourth paragraph she writes that “Indonesia, which traditionally practices a more tolerant Islam has the World’s largest Muslim population”.
The question here is, what is meant by “…a more tolerant Islam…”?? The implication quite clearly is that as the Indonesians practice a “more tolerant” version of Islam then the real version must be less tolerant in other words intolerant.
This is yet another classic example of ‘Unspeak’.
Through a careful selection of words Steele has smuggled in a personal opinion and made what should have been an objective article into a biased article portraying a negative image of Islam i.e. a religion that is intolerant.
No surprises therefore that Steele’s article gets a “Negative” rating for using manipulative language to influence the readers opinions about Islam.
Article Verdict: Negative
1 comment:
Whilst I do not wish to defend Jo Steele, there can be no doubt that there are different types of Muslims in the world. There are those like the Indonesians who are more tolerant of other faiths/cultures and then we have Muslims like the Taliban who will not tolerate any other point of view except their own.
In fact by highlighting the "tolerant form of Islam" practiced in countries such as Indonesia, it could be argued that this shows the reader that there are other forms of Islam and not all Muslims are as extreme in their views like the Taliban.
Having said that, I think it's interesting that the only negative aspect of the article that you find is Jo Steele's comment about a tolerant form of Islam.
The article begins with the headline, "Quarter of the World is Muslim". To the average reader this comes across as "there's so many Muslims in the world!!". A more accurate headline would be "Three Quarters of the World are Non-Muslim".
Sadly this has become an all too common approach in the UK media. On the one hand the statistics show us that Muslims in the UK are a tiny minority. Yet it is reported in such a way that it gives ammunition to those ignorant far right groups who would have us believe Muslims have taken over the country.
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