Rant of the Day: FOX News
Originally posted on Facebook:
Grr.
My parents love the FOX News Channel and I usually watch it when I’m at home, but today’s reporting made me mad.
They talked about a couple of guys held for suspicion of terrorism. What is the first term they used to describe them in the story? “Muslim”
That makes me mad because (like we learned in Stereotyping and Prejudice class) when something stange happens (like finding bomb-making materials in their car) and a percevied minority (Muslims) happen together, we associate each thing with the other. So in many viewers’ minds, Muslim = Terrorists now.
It’s stupid and unfair. They should have maybe described where they came from (state of residence) or their age or something technical like that rather than something like religion or race. Describing them as Muslims when talking about terrorism shows an obvious prejudice against Muslims because you know they would have never said, “…both Christians” as part of the terrorist story.
October 8th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
I absolutely agree with your frustration. I’m so tired of the stereotyping that goes on in the media, or in a broader sense, society. On of my very last classes at Franklin was a Humanities class called World Religion. We studied the 5 major religions of the world and Islam was one of them. I knew somethings about Islam, but it opened my eyes to another level. Islam or Muslim isn’t all about terrorism or acts of violence. They are loving people just like everyone else. Unfortunately, the extremists have given a bad name to the Muslim religion. I just hope one day that society will see the truth about people and not stereotype others just because there are a few “bad eggs” in the bunch.
October 9th, 2007 at 11:49 pm
It’s interesting because we just discussed this in my women’s studies class. How we tend to look at people who don’t fit our stereotypical “Western” model — male, white, middle class, straight, Christian, able bodied — as “other” and therefore deviating from the “norm,” less than, etc which simply facilitates a medium for prejudice and discrimination. Interesting stuff. Very frustrating, though, I agree.