Negativity in the news was discussed in my previous article along with how it psychologically affects people as well as their perception of the groups the news is about. Muslims, Palestinians and Africans are some of the many groups who seem to have turned into "breaking news", especially when they are viewed as the "other". According to a study by Media Tenor, in which more than 430,000 news reports from 2007 to 2013 were analyzed, around 75 percent of coverage of Muslims in the news in the US and Europe was related to violence or terrorism. This has most likely been adding fuel to the fire because hate crimes against Muslims and Islamophobia have been on the rise in the past decade as well. It is important to note that the news is not wrongfully blaming terrorists who call themselves Muslims, but the problem is that the news coverage has turned these people into representatives of around 1.6 billion Muslims who come from many different ethnic, cultural and educational backgrounds. On the other hand, if positive news about a Muslim scientist, inventor or social activist is reported, describing them as "Muslim" suddenly becomes irrelevant leaving viewers with something similar to classical conditioning where the words "Muslim" and "terrorist" automatically invoke each other in people's minds. Of course the news coverage of Muslims cannot be complete without mentioning the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which provides endless "material" for news networks whether in the West or in the Middle East. In this case, the effect of bias and hostile media is most evident when different images and news reports are viewed or heard in different parts of the world. As a result, a political conflict, which has been promoted as a religious one along with Israel's premise that the land was given to the Jews by God, has led many people to consider this to be a struggle between Muslims and Jews, which does not only hinder peace, but also interfaith dialogue and coexistence. However, there is an important detail that is being overlooked, which is the fact that not all Palestinians are Muslims and not all Jews are Israelis. The problem is not only in the biased Western media, but also in the news coverage in the Middle East of the Palestinian struggle. As Arabs and Muslims, we have seen images of dead children, massacres, destruction and the suffering of the Palestinians under occupation ever since people started watching television. Thus, Palestine has been reduced to a war zone with the image of Al Aqsa Mosque in the background, something which we are completely cut out of physically. Conflict and suffering are definitely part of the daily life of Palestinians and it is something that they have to live with, but many strong Palestinians do not let it define who they are and do their best to lead as normal a life as they can. They are human beings and individuals who try to be involved in their communities just like the rest of us. They celebrate holidays, get married, and pass their folklore on to their children in order for Palestine to stay alive even if some of them do not. Psychologists who have researched the effect of violent images in the media have found that constant exposure to graphic violence can lead to one of two extremes that they describe as sensitization in which people become more sensitive to emotional distress or desensitization, which is the case when people become accustomed to seeing violence without feeling anything. Violent video games seem to have the same numbing effect on the brain, which can lead to making violence acceptable and making people prone to committing violence themselves. News coverage about Africa similarly focuses mostly on violence and tragedy. The simple exercise of a professor of an undergraduate African art class was an eye-opener for me on how the news affects our perception of Africa in particular. In the exercise, the professor had us write the first words we thought about when he said "Africa". Not surprisingly, our words were: wars, famine, AIDS, and, of course, safari. He spent the whole class discussing the problem with our answers, which begins with the fact that most of us perceived Africa as one big country while it is a continent consisting of many countries with different cultures, religions, languages, ethnicities and even social problems. Marieme Jamme, who was named one of the 100 most influential Africans of 2014, wrote in the Guardian that "the failure to represent Africa fairly has reinforced Western prejudices and deflected international development efforts from what should have been their core objectives. Africans have become passive recipients of often counterproductive aid instead of active participants in positive change." If I learned only one thing from that class, it was that there is more to Africa than what we see in the news including art, culture and history, which is worth appreciating in addition to the issue of the help that we need to offer. International CEO and founder of Media Tenor, Roland Schatz, said: "Despite the increasing need for better understanding between people of all religious faiths, overall the news media is not helping to build compassion and tolerance, but, in many cases, is actively working against it." As viewers of the news, we need to know the truth and seek different sources to truly enrich our knowledge about the "other". People who learn about different groups of people solely from the narrow perspective of news headlines presume that they are knowledgeable while in reality they are utterly ignorant of who these people really are and their knowledge is most likely characterized by generalizations and stereotypes. — The writer can be reached at [email protected]
