Quality Reporting (ii)

[caddyman]

Last Thursday, Armistice Day, there was a news report amongst the general coverage of the commemorations, of a group of Muslim youths who held their own little demonstration during which they burnt a large poppy and "screamed insults" about British war dead. The Sun has tracked them down and named them.

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Youth Association  raised nearly £21,000 for the Royal British Legion by selling poppies at railway stations over a 13 hour period on 1 November 2010.

One of these events makes the headlines, the other a mention in an opinion column. Guess which is which?

Comments

[keith-london.livejournal.com]

One of those actions is unremarkable (as it ought to be in this country) and the other seems shocking and unacceptable (and presumably designed to attract publicity!) (Find me a Christian based group that tells British soldiers to burn in hell, and burn the poppy.) I note that the SUn itself had both the headline, and the counter opinion on the same page.

I would also question whether the islamic sect you mentioned does represent accurately the British muslims' attitude towards Armistice Day. Just as those few anti-poppy muslims do not represent the vast majority of British muslims, I suspect the Ahmamdiya group are in a similar position. For me the true test would be - how many British muslims might wear the poppy with genuine pride? (I have seen one muslim, a politician, Labour's Sadiq Khan wear one - but I admit, I don't get around that much these days).

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

The point is that Muslims tend to get the negative headlines and that colours people's views of that community.

Yes, the Sun does mention the good work done by the youth community, but not as a newsworthy item, just in an opinion piece. It's not worth a headline to them. I venture to suggest that if a working class pub group raised £20k for the RBL, they would get a favourable mention somewhere.

[ginasketch.livejournal.com]

The point is that Muslims tend to get the negative headlines and that colours people's views of that community.

You pretty much said what I was going to say.

[keith-london.livejournal.com]

It's not really the publics' fault that some (so-called) muslims get "negative headlines" - since those seem to go out of their way to try and get it - for example the extremist "muslims" who wanted to stage a protest at Wooten Bassett. Or perhaps the ultimate "negative headline" must have been British born "muslims" carrying out London's 7/7 attacks. Even then we are conditioned not to have our views coloured of the muslims as a whole - which must be the right way.

If anything, we are perhaps not told the whole picture sometimes because of political correctness. For example, the BBC (i.e. on their TV news) seemed to avoid telling us that "muslim" protestors held out banners saying "Timms go to hell" in support of the nutcase (another supposedly devout muslim) who stabbed him twice and nearly killed him.

The point about "negative headlines" must be - negative as they are, we need to be aware of such incidents, and we need to see them in perspective. Poppy burning seems to be a new low in this country. It reflects badly on those who do it. Not necessarily on the wider community (unless that community condones it - which I don't believe it does.)

[agentinfinity.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of media coverage of racial issues in this country is deeply unhelpful. I dunno if it is outright racism or just another by-product of general media bad practice.

Apparently bad news sells more papers.

There are some good books about this sort of thing, plus issues with rolling news mentioned in your previous post, if you're interested.

Amusing Ourselves To Death by Neil Postman is a really interesting look at TV as a medium for serious content, it's a bit too technologically determinist for me, but it's still very good. http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/014303653X

McChesney, Herman and Chomsky, in different combinations of partnerships have all written interesting things about the way American news media work which are also interesting from a British point of view. (They're lefty but also very informative).

Also, a search on Galtung and Ruge's work on News Values will get you some stuff about news values which is widely used in media theory.

Anyhoo, that's enough media waffle from me.

[failing-angel.livejournal.com]

I know which should have been given more space in the paper, but somehow I can't see that meeting the Sun's editorial policy.