05279
May 24, 2005   

‘Holier-than-thou false prophets’   

Evangelical-controlled U.S. media
bashed for stereotyping Muslims 

by Fredrick Nzwili
Ecumenical News International

NAIROBI — Media controlled by evangelical Christians in the United States have come in for a verbal lashing from a Lebanese‑based journalism academic for promoting negative stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims.  

     “The United States’ faltering public diplomacy and attempts to democratize in the Arab/Muslim world are further being hobbled by these holier-than-thou false prophets,” Magda Abu‑Fadil, the director of the Institute for Professional Journalists at the Lebanese American University, told delegates to the International Press Institute (IPI) World Congress in Nairobi. 

     About 300 journalists, media owners, managers and other delegates from 53 countries are attending the IPI conference in the Kenyan capital.

     The IPI, based in Vienna, promotes the free flow of news and information.  

     Abu‑Fadil made her remarks during a May 23 session on “Media Coverage of the Islamic World.” She quoted the May/June issue of the Columbia Journalism Review in asserting that pro‑war “conservative evangelicals” control at least six U.S. television networks, each reaching millions of homes, and most of the country’s more than 2,000 religious radio stations.  

            She asserted that one-quarter of U.S. Americans believe negative stereotypes about Muslims, including one that says followers of Islam teach their children to hate. 

     Salim Lone, a Kenyan and a former spokesperson for the United Nations envoy to Iraq, said during the same discussion that there is a profound crisis in American media coverage of the Islamic world. He said negative stereotypes of Islam also are prevalent in other Western media.  

     “While it is clearly the actions of the United States and a small number of extremist Muslims which are inflaming passions among previously moderate Muslims and Western populations,” Lone said, “sections of the Western media are ... exacerbating the tensions (by) portraying Muslim states and groups, or even Islam, as the fount of terror.”

     The speakers urged Western societies to understand that “anti‑Semitism” includes anti‑Arab and anti‑Muslim sentiments, because millions of Arabs and Muslims are Semites.