Page - 156 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

Augie Fleras | Ethnic and Aboriginal Media in Canada 156 know their place); second, minorities are associated with negative contexts related to crime or terrorism; third, their cultural values and practices are dismissed as incommensurate with contemporary secular society; and fourth, minority realities and concerns are refracted through a pro white gaze (perspective) that invariably diminishes or distorts. However subtle and understated, such a negativity framework not only reduces minorities to the status of problem people, but, by essentializing minorities as little more than ethnics, also feeds into a national discourse over who is acceptable and what is normal (see also McLeod 2007/2006). Nowhere is this negativity more evident than with media coverage of Muslims or those of Arabian appearance (Canadian Islamic Conference 2005). Positive and normalizing images of ordinary Muslims or Arabs are almost non existent in the mainstream media (Alliance of Civilizations 2006; Starck 2007). Coverage of Muslims as violent and irrational is heavily skewed towards international conflicts without providing a historical context (Manning 2006). For newsmedia, the debate over the so-called clash of civilizations – Islamic vs Western – tends to frame their coverage accordingly, that is, protagonists ensnared in global geopolitics (in the same way the Cold War once served as a framing function for geo-political developments) (Seib 2004/05). Newsframes routinely portray Muslim/Arab males as tyrants or terrorists, while Muslim/ Arab women are reduced to the level of burqa-bearing submissives at odds with modern realities. Visual images about Islam immediately triggers a sub- liminal negativity: A bearded Middle Eastern looking man wearing a black cloak and turban can trigger an entire series of images of a fanatical religious movement, of airplane hijackings, of western hostages held helpless in dungeons, of truck bombs killing hundreds of innocent people, of cruel punishment sanctioned by Islamic law, and of suppression of human rights – in sum of intellectual and moral regression (Karim 2006:118). Clearly, then, mainstream media stand accused of being racist, including the use of loaded terminology (Islam as extremist, fundamentalist, terrorists, or primitive) and simplistic and negative stereotypes (deSouza and Williamson 2006). The combination of insult and injury, together with diminished self- esteem, fosters resentment and rage over what many see as white propaganda. Such racialized one-sidedness also intensifies the risk of racial tensions and increased discrimination. Not surprisingly, perhaps, when a Gallup poll asked 10,000 respondents in predominantly Muslim countries what the West could do to improve relations with the Muslim world, 47 percent (the single largest