How the Media Has Changed the Definition of Terrorism (Read in between the Lines)
A man walks into a school building armed with a loaded gun and shoots everyone in sight. Another one walks into a crowd of happy concert goers and manages to kill several people in a span of 10 minutes before cocking the gun at himself. And recently, a deranged person walks into a mosque in New Zealand killing at least 50 people and injuring even more.
We forget that we all have the tendency to hate
Daily mail words their headline about the latter shooter, “From Bullied Schoolboy to Mass Killer: New Zealand mosque shooter was “badly picked on as a child because he was chubby.” Daily Mirror, following the same trend also writes that the New Zealand shooter was an “Angelic boy who grew into an evil far-right mass killer.” The reason why these media outlets do not call these murderers the terrorists they really are and instead find excuses as to why they did what they did is because they all have one thing in common and that is the fact that they are Caucasian males.
And Hate is still Hate no matter who you are give or take
It’s frustrating how the standards are switched up when another person belonging to a different religious and racial demographic from these men, (in most cases, Muslim) performs the same or a similar act. A New York Post headline of a story about two shooters who opened fire at a social services center for people with disabilities did not hesitate to read, “Muslim Killers”. While another Italian newspaper was equally forthright calling the assailants of the 2015 Paris terrorist attack, “Islamic Bastards”.
We forget that the people we ignorantly fear have feelings that they hide and wonder why they have to endure living under an undeserved stereotype
This shows how much newspapers, T.V. and radio stations are biased toward some groups of people resulting in harsher and less filtered headlines about them.
Every day to them is another fight
This tendency of media platforms to downplay or exaggerate the gravity of a person’s crime depending on the person’s demographic indirectly takes a toll on the public’s perception. It also helps instigate racism, discrimination and all the implicit biases that push us to dislike certain groups of people.
To make everyone understand them, to overcome the pain, the stigmatization
What these media platforms are doing is similar to a method of journalism called Yellow Journalism which came about in the 19th century thanks to Joseph Pulitzer and William Hearst. Now, I won’t go into a long history lesson about how these men used this type of news reporting to instigate the Spanish-American War, but yellow journalism is basically used as a technique to propagate an agenda through eye-catching headlines and exaggerated news articles and pictures. Most times, this form of journalism is used to set a particular group of people against another through sensationalism and manipulation.
We have perpetuated a lie about them and now we all live in that confusion
The dichotomy of the headlines written about the Caucasian and Muslim mass shooters introduce the perception that all Muslims are in fact evil terrorists while the Caucasian shooters probably had a troubled childhood. The wording of these headlines slanders an entire religion of people and make them suffer the consequences like noticing people cross the street to the other sidewalk when they see them coming just because they wear hijabs.
It is time we realize that the skin they have, clothes they wear or the things they believe in do not make them any less of a human being,
They do not need anyone’s validation to be
The entire Caucasian race however has never been slandered by these media platforms for the wrongdoings of these men for reasons we should all take time to ask ourselves. They are assessed as individuals and used to group their entire race, political party or religious affiliation while their Muslim counterparts are not given that isolation.
And let it not be a fact from us that slips that...
This biased way of news reporting on media platforms cultivates a hate culture unbeknownst to the public media consumer resulting in a brain-washed and altered way of thinking about race and religion. We as readers, watchers or users of these media platforms should be aware of this and prevent this type of journalism from controlling our perceptions toward particular demographics. We should not allow media platforms to call a terrorist an ‘Angelic boy’ after he heartlessly opened fire on a peaceful gathering of people in their place of worship.
