Chapter 1 – Media’s Perception of Terrorism and Influence over the Audience
By principle, the media should be impartial, unbiased and independent while illustrating their duties. The main aim and task of the media is to give accurate information to the public which should be based on the truth. During times of war the western media has become a place where the opinion of the audience at home is of vital importance to the success and failure of the war being fought against terrorism. In today’s time, the media is the main means of expression through which people receive information on terrorism or any other conflict, which then enlighten us about the unfolding events. Since the western media undisputedly is the most powerful, it has the means to present government actions in a supportive way, expose atrocities on either side and raise issues to the public which assist their governmental agenda. Here the question that comes to mind is whether the western media portrays terrorism, Muslims and Arabs in an accurate aspect. The western media uses certain techniques to depict terrorists in their own view which have had disastrous effects on Arabs as well as Americans all over the world.
It is very unfortunate that despite all the recent terrorist attacks, weather they were significant or minor, the media still has not come up with a definitive definition of “terrorism” and “who is a terrorist”. The main issue with western media reporting on terrorism is their flaw of having discrepancies in their news. In a recent article “Ethical balance of reporting on Terrorism”, the author states that the western media has had no difficulty labeling the Al-Qaeda terror network as “terrorists” however they cease to acknowledge the same label for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, also known as the PKK (Kanli 22). The PKK started in 1984 and is a separatist organization which tries to promote their political aims through the use of violence and coercion, which is very similar to what Al-Qaeda aspires to do. It is very well recognized that the PKK has been listed under the terrorist organization list in most EU countries, yet we still see some news channels in the western media referring to the PKK as a “guerrilla group” or “insurgents” (Citlioglu 39).
The western media uses certain techniques which the audience ignores and fails to contemplate as propaganda. The main reason why an objective analysis of terrorism is not revealed in the western media is because of media ownership, news source, use of language and logical fallacies. These are attributes that the western media utilizes to their own advantage.
Media ownership basically defines having control and possession of the media. Since the majority of newspapers and television stations are owned by multi-national corporations, they decide what is broadcasted and which stories could potentially aid the interests of the media owners. In the USA, “NBC and CBS, which are two television companies, are owned by firms which are involved in arms manufacture and nuclear power, while other oil companies like Exxon, Texaco and Mobil have seats on the boards of these news organizations.” (Kumar Mitra 27). According to this, news that emphasize crisis with nuclear power or waste, or news about oil corporations involved with government that violate human rights are highly unlikely to be given much coverage (Kumar Mitra 27).
Having dominated over the news source, the western media has been able to dictate and contain certain news material that they wish not to broadcast. A certain statistic showed that 90% of the world's news comes from Associated Press (USA), Reuters (UK) and Agence France Presse (France), while less than 5% of news coverage is accounted by Africa. Independent Arabic news channels like Al-Jazeera were deemed as “a threat by the West and Arab governments were ordered by the USA to restrain these stations.” Since certain branches failed to do so, the offices of Al-Jazeera were bombed in Afghanistan and Iraq (Krysstal 2006). Another source states that during the Iraq invasion in 2003, the US decided to implement the embedded press system where the reporters were ordered to travel alongside military. This then apparently made it visible that reporting the war on Iraq would be considerably biased and difficult to provide both sides of the conflict (Paul, Reporters on the Battlefield: Embedded Press System).
Certain times in media, the use of language can be crucial and influential depending on how it is applied. Krysstal, 2006 emphasizes on the use of language in the article: The Western Media, and also argues how US media manipulates and distorts the truth by merely using different words in dissimilar situations. “The Afghans that were financed by USA to fight the Russians were referred to as freedom fighters, whereas the Palestinians fighting against the occupation of their land by USA-backed Israel are called terrorists.” Sometimes countries themselves are classified differently by the western media. Syria is an anti-West, pro-Palestinian country and is repeatedly described as a state that supports terrorism. A country like Saudi Arabia which is non-democratic however is pro-West is referred to as a moderate state in western Media. The western media coverage on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is significantly distorted and the most controversial. In the Middle-East, almost twice as many Palestinians are killed by Israelis as Israelis killed by Palestinians; however the US media prefers to deliberate more on the Israeli victims by interviewing their relatives. Palestinian victims are usually tagged as gunmen, terrorists or militants. Sometimes the active voice and passive voice is used by media which creates inconsistency and clear inequity. “The active voice is used for Israeli victims: Palestinian militants murdered three Israeli settlers. While the passive voice is used for Palestinian victims: Three Palestinians died when their village was hit by Israeli shells” (Krysstal 2006). During the war in 2001, Afghanistan was bombed by US forces and estimated to have killed 4000 civilians; however this particular incident was plainly disregarded by the western media.
Western media frequently presents logical fallacies during arguments to conceal the truth and distract the audience from other important issues. Some of these fallacies include: generalization, false analogies, and “poisoning the well”. A common generalization is, “all Muslims are Arabs and all Arabs are Muslim”, which is very incorrect because several Arabs in Lebanon, Palestine and Egypt are Christians. At the same time, there are people who are not Arab but are Muslim. Another fallacy used by the media is “false analogy”, which makes a comparison that doesn’t hold any valid meaning. An example being the argument, “Iraq will attack the US because it has already attacked Iran”. According to certain sources, Iraq barley had enough resources to defend itself when it was invaded let alone wage an attack on a country thousands of miles away. The third misconception purposely used by media is a phrase known as “poisoning the well”, which uses specific language to influence the audience’s thinking. Whenever the western media reports about the war on terror, the term Islamic terrorist is constantly used and rarely will you simply hear terrorist. This is done to denote that most if not all terrorists are Muslim.
Through certain systematic methods, without breaking any law or regulation, the western media has successfully been able to distort the image of Arabs and Muslims around the world. Rather than being unbiased and presenting accurate information to allow the audience to make the judgment themselves, they provide selective images that are repeatedly shown to the American public which has skewed the image of Arabs and Muslims for them. The freedom of speech that the media represents is one thing, however manipulating the definition of terrorism and illustrating it to be something different is another.
Chapter 2 – Outcome of Media’s Portrayal
Due to the continuous misconception of Arabs and Muslims in the western media, most American citizens are ready to believe the biased reporting that comes out of their television screens and adopted this theory that all Arabs/Muslims are terrorists. The fact of the matter is that the media has shaped several stereotypes about Arabs/Muslims and since majority of the Western public have no additional sources to rely on, they fall into this state of ignorance ready to believe the prejudice labels of “extremist” or “terrorist” given to Arabs and Muslims.
Most Americans find it hard to believe and would rather not believe that their own media is attempting to manipulate them, so they simply believe what is told to them. The radical Arab is a stereotype that is familiar to the Western public, where all Arabs/Muslims are potential terrorists. This is solely based on the ideas that the mass media of the west has broadcasted. Reporters develop their own distorted image of Arabs/Islam to help their own governmental agenda which is then adopted by the Western culture (Agha 2). As stated before, the western media presents their information in a way where it supports its government’s actions and at the same time assures the western people that the government is justified in doing what they do.
A negative representation of Arabs/Muslims is becoming more instinctive in Western society from incorrect media reporting. The media assists to create a certain image of Arabs to innocent audiences. The American society is often misleading about Arabs/Muslims through the “images on television, movies, magazines, radios, and comic strips in newspapers, which encourage pessimistic messages amongst their audiences” (Hassan 2). The media Western reporters often say that Muslims are terrorists. This becomes a common image to the general person that all Muslims are terrorists.
A significant reason why the western media distorts the image of Arabs/Muslims is partly unintentional and partly to fulfill their political agenda of blaming and conveying a specific image for all Muslims. The unintentional misconception is a flaw of the western media’s technique on how to simply broadcast accurate information. Waseem Sajjad, former Chairman of the Senate of Pakistan clarifies the state of Arab/Muslims and the media:
The Islamic world is poorly represented in the West in terms of press and media coverage. Not only are there just handfuls of news agencies in Muslim countries; there is the concern over the number of inexperienced reporters. Many reporters don’t understand the local cultures nor speak the language, leaving them with access to only those English or French speaking Westernized elites. Thus their representation is often a biased account of the political and social events from the point of view of the ruling minority in Muslim and Arab countries (Hassan 2).

While the western media attempts to convey and argue the fair cause of their government’s actions, the US is a place where Muslims/Arabs symbolize a threat for the American society. The media has played a central role in creating this negative image for Arabs currently present and out of the United States. The media’s frequent discrepancies and inaccuracy for describing Arabs/Muslims is the reason the general public of the United States fears Arabs. The media demonstrates apparent biased against not only Arabs but Islam as a religion as well. When the media misinterprets Islam, the American public tends to believe it, only because the media is the main cause of information that the public gets about Arabs/Muslims. This unawareness that the West acquires from the media directs them into constructing their own stereotypes about Muslims/Arabs as extremists. The West persistently views Islam as extremist or fundamental merely because the terminology is purposely manipulated by the media to present Arabs/Muslims in a bad light as well as to supportively aid their governmental agenda.
Chapter 3 – Consequences of Media’s Depiction of Terrorism
As a result of the Media’s portrayal of Arabs and Muslims, there have been two major outcomes that are now evident; those ideologies being, Islamophobia and Anti-Americanism. Anti-Arab/Muslim feelings in the United States have intensified, especially after the terrorists attacks of September 11, 2001. Between one-fourth and one-third of Americans hold negative views of Islam and Muslims. Political leaders, especially on news shows, talk radio and cable television are increasingly using harsh language to refer to Arabs and Muslims. Government officials and politicians have called Islam, “a wicked religion”, and Muslims “worse than Nazis.” A global survey about the world’s public opinion of the United States showed that the feeling was mutual. In five major Arab countries, 51 percent to 79 percent of the respondents expressed unfavorable view of the United States. Clearly the statistics show that anti-Arabism or Islamophobia and anti-Americanism are on the rise and one of the definitive causes is media’s portrayal of Arabs/Muslims.
Arab Americans have experienced a repercussion as an outcome of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, including other events where Arabs were not involved, like the Oklahoma City bombing, and the Iranian hostage crisis. According to a source, three days after the Oklahoma City bombing “more than 200 serious hate crimes were committed against Arab Americans and American Muslims” (Arab American Institute 2005). Another poll which was conducted by the Arab American Institute (2001), 32% of Arab Americans reported having been subjected to some form of discrimination during their lifetimes. Another major concern is the fact that 45% of students and 37% of Arab Americans of the Muslim faith have reported being targeted by discrimination since September 11. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the number of physical attacks against Arabs and Muslims, and others mistaken as such, rose significantly after 9/11. Hate crimes against people of Middle Eastern descent increased from 354 attacks in 2000, to 1,501 attacks in 2001. Among the victims of this growing hate were four immigrants who were shot and killed by a man named Larme Price who confessed to killing them as a revenge for the 9/11 attacks. Although Price depicted his victims as Arabs, only one was from an Arab country.
Eric Boehlert has blamed the US media, in particular Fox News, of "pandering to anti-Arab hysteria" by "ignoring the most rudimentary tenets of journalism in their haste to better tell a sinister story about lurking Middle Eastern dangers". While another analyst John F. Sugg has accused famous media terrorism specialist Steve Emerson of relentless anti-Arab injustice and of rushing to incriminate Arab-Americans after the Oklahoma City bombing.
Parts of Hollywood are known for using a inconsistent number of Arabs as villains and of portraying Arabs negatively and stereotypically. According to a critic, "the only vicious racial stereotype that's not only still permitted but actively endorsed by Hollywood is that of Arabs as crazed terrorists” (Godfrey Cheshire, New York Press). The typical image of Arabs by western movies is that of a "money-grubbing caricatures that sought world domination worshipped a different God and killed innocents." According to Newsweek columnist Meg Greenfield, anti-Arab emotion currently cause fallacies about Arabs, and hinder authentic peace in the Middle East.

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