Page - 194 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

Kenneth Starck | Perpetuating Prejudice 194 Gulf War, Gavrilos (2002) found that sympathetic coverage of Arab American reactions to the war revealed a heightened loyalty of this group of people toward America. The author concluded that Arab Americans “were ultimately represented as part of the nation’s imagined community,” reinforcing the media’s “hegemonic construction” of the United States (p. 443). The result was an image of patriotic Americans – an image distinctly different from the usual, negative stereotypical depictions. What Gavrilos found appears similar to Fiebig-von Hase’s notion of “enemy images”, wherein groups behave toward one another on the basis of self-interest, such as security. A study that looked directly at a newspaper’s coverage of the Arab American community in Detroit was carried out just before September 11, 2001 (Weston and Dunsky 2002). The study, which also looked at media coverage of Arabs abroad, found that the Detroit Free Press presented a multifaceted view of Arab Americans though not entirely absent of what the authors call the “strange and exotic”. Themes emerging depicted Arabs as becoming a growing political force, as struggling immigrants, and as striving against discrimination and stereotyping. Significantly, the articles during the period under study were written by two reporters who spoke Arabic and aggressively covered the community. An important observation by the authors: [...] the local press tends to treat such (ethnic) groups as multifaceted members of the community and the stereotyping and over- generalizations increase as distance from the community increases. (p. 142). Ibrahim (2003) prepared an extensive compilation of studies of U.S. media coverage of Arabs and the Middle East focusing on three main communication areas: production, content, and effects. The object was to point to possible gaps in the research, such as insufficient attention given to the journalistic producers and media websites. Many of the observations in this literature review which encompassed more than half a century underscore common themes that have emerged in the research. U.S. media depended heavily on American (as opposed to Arab) sources for coverage. Stereotyping in the 1950s regarded Arabs as dishonest, undemocratic, and unreliable with low standards of education and living. Stereotyping in the 1980s moved to association with oil, wealth, and extravagance. Coverage itself tended to lack historical and cultural context. In terms of media effects, the author rightfully points out that the research shows that the predominant negative portrayals of Arabs and the Middle East produce palpable effects on the lives of Arab Americans. The result for Arabs living in the U.S.: hate crimes, job discrimina- tion, bomb threats, verbal and physical harassment, threats, and so on. The