Volume 6, Issue 4, July 2014, Pages 1067–1078
Rachid Acim1
1 University of Sultan Moulay Slimane, Beni Mellal, Morocco
Original language: English
Copyright © 2014 ISSR Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This paper is intended to discuss the image of Islam and Muslims in the representational discourse of the New York Times during the Arab Spring. It is predicated on the premise that news reports in the media are both biased and less objective. Certainly, the wave of demonstrations in Muslim majority countries like Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and even Syria were a raw material for the New York Times' writers to report if not rethink their views and perceptions of Islam and Muslims. In this journalistic discourse, Muslim women are delineated as being both alien and different; they do not cherish a good representation, given the bad images that turn linked to them many decades ago. As for the Arab leaderships, they are in turn not safe from the propagandistic tendencies of this print media form as they become equated with and synonymous to evil, despotism and dictatorship. While it adopts the content analysis method, this paper aims at casting some light on the way the New York Times render Islam and Muslims in its columns. It, therefore, makes no distinction between news reports, be they articles, Op-Eds or Editorials.
Author Keywords: New York Times, Islam, Arab Spring, misrepresentation, bias.
Rachid Acim1
1 University of Sultan Moulay Slimane, Beni Mellal, Morocco
Original language: English
Copyright © 2014 ISSR Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
This paper is intended to discuss the image of Islam and Muslims in the representational discourse of the New York Times during the Arab Spring. It is predicated on the premise that news reports in the media are both biased and less objective. Certainly, the wave of demonstrations in Muslim majority countries like Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and even Syria were a raw material for the New York Times' writers to report if not rethink their views and perceptions of Islam and Muslims. In this journalistic discourse, Muslim women are delineated as being both alien and different; they do not cherish a good representation, given the bad images that turn linked to them many decades ago. As for the Arab leaderships, they are in turn not safe from the propagandistic tendencies of this print media form as they become equated with and synonymous to evil, despotism and dictatorship. While it adopts the content analysis method, this paper aims at casting some light on the way the New York Times render Islam and Muslims in its columns. It, therefore, makes no distinction between news reports, be they articles, Op-Eds or Editorials.
Author Keywords: New York Times, Islam, Arab Spring, misrepresentation, bias.
How to Cite this Article
Rachid Acim, “The New York Times Coverage of Islam in the Arab Spring,” International Journal of Innovation and Applied Studies, vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 1067–1078, July 2014.
