Media and Minorities. Questions on Representation from an

Transcription

Georg Ruhrmann / Yasemin Shooman / Peter Widmann (eds.)
Media and Minorities
Questions on Representation
from an International Perspective
© 2016, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen
ISBN Print: 9783525300886 — ISBN E-Book: 9783666300882
Schriften des Jüdischen Museums Berlin
Band 4
Media and Minorities
Questions on Representation from
an International Perspective
Edited by Georg Ruhrmann,
Yasemin Shooman and Peter Widmann
on behalf of the Jewish Museum Berlin
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
Mit 21 Abbildungen
Aus dem Deutschen übertragen von:
Adam Blauhut (Einleitung, Shion Kumai, Peter Widmann)
Allison Brown (Yasemin Shooman, Georg Ruhrmann)
Naomi Shulman (Daniel Wildmann)
Kate Sturge (Christel Gärtner)
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Inhalt
Introduction
Georg Ruhrmann, Yasemin Shooman, Peter Widmann
Introduction.
The Media as Agents and Objects of Social Change
in Immigration Societies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9
Einleitung.
Medien als Moment und Objekt sozialen Wandels
in Einwanderungsgesellschaften . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
13
Chapter 1: Media Production and Institutional Structures
Augie Fleras
Theorizing Minority Misrepresentations.
Reframing Mainstream Newsmedia as if White Ethnic Media
. . . . . .
21
Anamik Saha
From the Politics of Representation to the Politics of Production . . . . .
39
Sally Lehrman
Creating an Inclusive Public Commons.
Values and Structures in Journalism that Can Promote Change . . . . . .
50
Christel Gärtner
Religion and the Opinion Makers.
Views of Religion among Elite Journalists in Germany . . . . . . . . . . .
68
Chapter 2: Media Representation and Stereotyping of Minorities
Daniel Wildmann
German Television Crime Films and German Emotions.
Jews in Tatort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
85
6
Inhalt
Evelyn Alsultany
Arabs and Muslims in the U. S.-American Media Before and After 9/11 . . 104
Charlton McIlwain
Criminal Blackness.
News Coverage of Black Male Victims from Rodney King to Michael Brown 118
Yasemin Shooman
Between Everyday Racism and Conspiracy Theories.
Islamophobia on the German-Language Internet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Chapter 3: Media Content and Its Effect
Peter Widmann
Stereotypes, Sound Bites, and Campaign Strategies.
The Interaction between Politicians and Journalists in
the German Debate on Roma from Southeastern Europe . . . . . . . . . . 159
Georg Ruhrmann
Integration in the Media.
Between Science, Policy Consulting, and Journalism . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Tyler Reny, Sylvia Manzano
The Negative Effects of Mass Media Stereotypes of Latinos and Immigrants 195
Chapter 4: Media Use and Strategies
for a More Inclusive Media Landscape
Shion Kumai
Paths to Greater Diversity in the Media.
Obstacles and Opportunities for Journalistic Practice
in Reporting on Migration Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Shion Kumai
Wege zu mehr Vielfalt in den Medien.
Hindernisse und Möglichkeiten für die journalistische Praxis
in der Berichterstattung über Migrationsthemen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
Introduction
Introduction
The Media as Agents and Objects of Social Change
in Immigration Societies
The mass media have long been recognized as important agents in political
and social life. Media companies and their professional journalists, editors,
photographers, and camera people generate the publicness and transparency
that is crucial for democracy. New roles are also emerging on the Internet:
Gatekeeping, the journalistic filtering of publishable content, is evolving into
gatewatching, the online monitoring of interesting material by all users. The
goal of gate watchers and authors is to make this content (more) public, to
share it with others, and to comment on and discuss it.
By setting agendas, the media influence the issues that the public debates
and to which parliaments and governments frequently respond with laws. At
the same time, the media create the interpretive frameworks through which
audiences understand the world. The secondary impressions that the media
thereby convey are all the more important when viewers, readers, and users
lack primary experience or direct contact with an issue. This applies, above
all, to the perception of minorities.
Since the first half of the twentieth century, media and communication research in the United States and in many other countries has provided a wealth
of empirical studies and theoretical explanations of mass-media content and
its impact. Central subjects of research include agenda setting, selected interpretive frameworks (“framing”), and the effects of reporting on election decisions, attitudes, and prejudices. Under the heading “mediatization,” scholars
have also examined the extent to which media logic changes political institutions and processes.
However, whether as private or public institutions, the media themselves are
results of the political, social, and economic power relations in society. They
are thus also subject to changing financial, economic, and labor markets; new
technologies; the social upheaval caused by globalization and migration; and
transformations of the political landscape. The press, the broadcasting industry, and the Internet are both agents and objects of change.
10
Conflicts
Media representatives are involved in the social, political, and ideological
conflicts that trigger change. This is particularly evident in societies shaped
by immigration, whether it took place decades, or centuries, ago or is taking
place now. In the countries of Europe and North America, which are the focus of the essays in this collection, media production is dominated by the
perspectives and interests of their majority populations, or at least their journalistic elites.
At the same time, criticism of this state of affairs is growing. A younger
generation of journalists is drawing attention to issues that the mainstream
media have marginalized. Critical online campaigns such as #AllWhiteFrontPages, alternative online services like MiGAZIN, and alliances such as Neue
deutsche Medienmacher [New German Media Makers] and Media Diversified
are challenging the norms of the mainstream, which continues to determine
the makeup of editorial staffs at established media companies as well as the
images, reports, and commentaries they produce.
For these innovators, the Internet is the most important playing field. It
has made it easier for obscure and previously marginalized voices to be heard.
However, the Internet has not revolutionized the media landscape. Even online, most people in Germany, for example, continue to get their news from
sites such as Spiegel Online, tagesschau.de, and bild.de, in other words, from
the digital content of established newspapers and television news programs,
which are extending their reach through the online channel. The situation is
no different in many other countries. The same private and public companies
that dominated national media markets in the decades prior to the rise of the
World Wide Web determine what is mainstream online today. This is why a
more inclusive public sphere will emerge not only alongside but through the
transformation of the large media companies. Nevertheless, as several essays
in this book argue, alternative campaigns and websites can increase the pressure on large institutions to further diversify their editorial staffs and broaden
their perspectives.
But there are two sides to communication on the Internet and the freedom
it provides. While the Internet offers the opportunity to present minority perspectives, it offers the same to right-wing extremist and right-wing populist
groups by enabling them to create a kind of counter-public sphere. It is therefore instrumental in spreading racism, antisemitism, and other exclusionary
ideologies. Such movements that mobilize support online, such as Germany’s PEGIDA [Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the Occident],
pose tremendous challenges for the mainstream media. For, according to
the supporters of these movements, their coverage is dominated by political
11
Introduction
correctness and an excessively benevolent attitude toward minorities. Both
on the Internet and on the street, these movements promote the view that the
“lying press” cannot be trusted. The danger for the mass media is that such
pressure may build to the point that they try to avoid the suspicion of giving
too much weight to minority views.
Changes and Obstacles to Change
Some of the essays in this volume show the limits of simple formulas for
change. More diverse editorial and production teams, for example, is an important step toward the goal of increasing representation and equality. The
fact is that even in countries with a long tradition of immigration most editorial teams are not nearly as diverse as the populations for which they produce
their content. In Germany, for example, around 20 percent of the population
has an immigration background, but among journalists only an estimated
2 to 4 percent do. In addition, these journalists are often automatically given
responsibility for migration issues, or they are steered away from these issues because of their suspected bias. Even if one assumes that people who are
potentially affected by stereotypes are more sensitive to them than others, the
question arises whether media production processes are fundamentally influenced by journalists’ backgrounds, that is, whether the fact that a scriptwriter for a British television series has an Indian background or the news
editor of a German magazine a Turkish one influences the production processes to which either contributes. After all, the sorts of reasoning characteristic of media organizations and their editorial teams influence people who
work on them.
Journalists, scriptwriters, editors, and directors learn the rules of their trade
in training programs, from colleagues, and in the face of market pressures.
They gain an instinctive understanding of what sells a product. They look for
stories with clear confrontations. Drama and danger attract attention. Stereotypes are well suited to this purpose whether they are negative, such as the
criminal Black, the freeloading Roma, the outcast Jew, the violent Muslim terrorist, or the lazy southern European, or seemingly positive, such as the Indian
dancer in a Bollywood film.
12
The Critical Perspective
The first step toward changing the production processes in large institutions is to analyze them. The willingness to engage in self-reflection varies
among journalists and editors. Even today, many journalists, even senior editors, do not take much interest in the current state of media and communication research or in the criticism voiced by minority organizations. They claim
that they just hold a mirror up to reality and leave it to the public to form its
opinion. The belief that reporting is objective if journalists are free of political control and stick to the rules of their trade continues to be popular in the
profession.
Many media professionals ignore the fact that every text, image, and film
sequence they produce is a result of a construction and selection process, that
is to say, of a more or less conscious selection of a perspective. Indeed, according to communication theory, every newspaper article, news site text, press
photo, and television news report is a staging of reality, even if the message is
not made up and journalists do their best to keep their political views out of
their presentation of the facts. Whatever our theoretical, empirical, or practical assessment of journalistic autonomy, journalists should at least be conscious of the inevitable steps in the production process and deal with them
transparently. Social integration can be supported if media coverage is topical, presents multiple perspectives, and if the media are careful to avoid the
stigmatizing and discriminatory stereotyping of minorities. A critical view is
the prerequisite for a discussion of the extent to which media agendas become
majority agendas and media “frames” become majority “frames.”
The present volume is the result of an international conference organized
by the Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin in cooperation with the Council on Migration. Special thanks go to Betul Yilmaz, who was instrumental
in organizing the conference and liaising with its speakers. We would also
like to thank Angelika Königseder, who coordinated the production of this
publication and edited all of the German contributions; Greg Sax, the editor of the English texts; and the translators Adam Blauhut, Allison Brown,
Naomi Shulman, and Kate Sturge. Finally, we owe a debt of gratitude to
Christine Marth and Marie Naumann of the publications department of the
Jewish Museum Berlin, who are in charge of the series in which this work is
published.
Jena, Berlin, and Marburg, November 2015
Einleitung
Medien als Moment und Objekt sozialen Wandels
in Einwanderungsgesellschaften
Massenmedien sind wichtige Akteure im politischen und gesellschaftlichen
Leben – das ist eine alte Einsicht. Professionelle Journalist*innen und Redaktionsleiter*innen, Medienunternehmen, Fotograf*innen und Kameraleute
stellen die Öffentlichkeit her, von der die Demokratie lebt. Und im social web
haben sich neue Positionen herausgebildet: Das Gatekeeping, also die journalistische Kontrolle über zu veröffentlichende Inhalte, wandelt sich zum
Gatewatching, der für alle User*innen offenen Beobachtung interessanter Materialien im Netz mit dem Ziel, sie öffentlich(er) zu machen, mit anderen zu
teilen, zu diskutieren und zu kommentieren.
Medien beeinflussen mit ihrem Agenda Setting die Themen, welche die
Bevölkerung bewegen und auf die Parlamente und Regierungen häufig mit
Gesetzen und Maßnahmen antworten. Sie schaffen zugleich die Interpretationsrahmen, mit denen Menschen die Welt jeweils spezifisch verstehen. Besonders wenn es Rezipient*innen und User*innen an unmittelbaren Kontakten
und damit an Primärerfahrungen fehlt, erhalten medial vermittelte Sekundärerfahrungen großes Gewicht. Dies betrifft in hohem Maße auch die Wahrnehmung von Minderheiten.
Seit der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts hat die Medien- und Kommunikationsforschung, vor allem in den Vereinigten Staaten und im Anschluss
daran in vielen anderen Ländern, eine Fülle theoretischer Erklärungen und
empirischer Studien zu Inhalten und Wirkung der Massenmedien hervorgebracht: etwa zu Agenda Setting und gewählten Interpretationsrahmen
(Framing), zum Einfluss der Berichterstattung auf Wahlentscheidungen, auf
Einstellungen und Vorurteile oder unter dem Stichwort der Mediatisierung
zur Frage, inwieweit Medienlogiken die politischen Institutionen und Prozesse eines Landes verändern.
Medien als private oder öffentlich-rechtliche Institutionen sind jedoch auch
ihrerseits Resultat der herrschenden politischen, sozialen und ökonomischen
Machtverhältnisse in der Gesellschaft. Damit unterliegen sie auch den Veränderungen auf den Finanz-, Wirtschafts- und Arbeitsmärkten, von Technologien und sozialen Transformationen durch Globalisierung und Migration
14
sowie dem Wandel der politischen Landschaft. Presse, Rundfunk und Netz
sind dabei gleichzeitig Moment und Objekt.
Konflikte
Medienschaffende sind in die sozialen, politischen und ideologischen Konflikte verwickelt, welche die Wandlungsprozesse auslösen. In besonderer
Weise wird das in Gesellschaften sichtbar, die durch Einwanderung geprägt
sind – durch Jahrzehnte oder Jahrhunderte zurückliegende wie gegenwärtige.
In den Ländern Europas und Nordamerikas, auf die sich die in diesem Band
versammelten Beiträge beziehen, dominieren in den großen Medienhäusern
vielfach Perspektiven und Interessen der Bevölkerungsmehrheiten, zumindest die ihrer journalistischen Eliten.
Gleichzeitig wächst die Kritik an diesem Zustand. Eine junge Generation
von Publizist*innen macht in verschiedenen Ländern Themen sichtbar, die
die Medien des Mainstream marginalisieren. Kritische Online-Kampagnen
wie #AllWhiteFrontPages, alternative Online-Dienste wie MiGAZIN und Zusammenschlüsse wie die Neuen deutschen Medienmacher oder Media Diversified fordern die Mehrheitsnorm heraus. Diese prägt nach wie vor die Zusammensetzung der Redaktionen etablierter Medienhäuser ebenso wie die
Bilder, Berichte und Kommentare, die sie produzieren.
Das Internet ist für die Neuerer das Hauptaktionsfeld. Marginalisierte, bisher nicht wahrgenommene Stimmen finden darin leichter Gehör. Das Netz
hat aber die Medienlandschaften nicht revolutioniert. Die meisten Menschen informieren sich etwa in Deutschland auch online auf Seiten wie Spiegel
Online, Tagesschau.de oder Bild.de, also mithilfe digitaler journalistischer
Angebote etablierter Zeitungsverlage und Fernsehsender, die ihre Reichweite
in Deutschland online noch erhöhen. Gleiches gilt für die Vereinigten Staaten und viele andere Länder. Den medialen Mainstream bestimmen auch im
Netz dieselben privaten Unternehmen und öffentlich-rechtlichen Anstalten,
die in den Jahrzehnten vor der Verbreitung des World Wide Web die nationalen Medienmärkte beherrschten. Inklusivere politische Öffentlichkeiten werden daher nicht allein neben den großen Medienhäusern entstehen, sondern
zu einem wesentlichen Grad auch durch deren Wandel. Alternative Inhalte
und Kampagnen im Netz können aber, das zeigen mehrere Beiträge in diesem Band, den Druck auf die großen Institutionen erhöhen, sich in der Zusammensetzung ihrer Redaktionen und im Spektrum ihrer Perspektiven weiter zu öffnen.
Die Freiheit und Kommunikation im Internet birgt jedoch nicht nur Chancen für Minderheitenperspektiven, sondern stärkt auch rechtsextreme und
15
Einleitung
rechtspopulistische Gruppierungen, indem ihnen ermöglicht wird, eine Art
»Gegenöffentlichkeit« herauszubilden. Dem World Wide Web kommt daher bei
der Verbreitung von Rassismus und Antisemitismus sowie anderen ausgrenzenden Ideologien eine zentrale Bedeutung zu. Die etablierten Medien werden
vor große Herausforderungen gestellt durch solche, über das Internet mobilisierende Bewegungen, wie zuletzt in Deutschland die »PEGIDA-Bewegung«
(»Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes«). Ihren Anhängern ist die Berichterstattung der Mainstream-Medien zu stark von einer
vermeintlichen Political Correctness und einer zu wohlwollenden Haltung gegenüber Minderheiten gekennzeichnet. Im Internet ebenso wie auf der Straße
propagieren sie daher die Ansicht, dass der »Lügenpresse« nicht zu trauen sei.
Für die Massenmedien kann sich daraus ein Druck aufbauen, den Verdacht von
sich abwenden zu müssen, Minderheiten nach dem Mund zu reden.
Veränderungen und ihre Hindernisse
Einige Beiträge dieses Bandes zeigen die Grenzen einfacher Rezepte. Eine
vielfältigere Zusammensetzung der Redaktionen und Produktionsteams etwa
ist aus Gründen der Repräsentation und Gleichstellung ein wichtiges Ziel.
Tatsächlich sind die meisten Redaktionen selbst in Ländern mit langer Einwanderungstradition weit davon entfernt, die Zusammensetzung der Bevölkerung widerzuspiegeln, für die sie Texte, Bilder und Programme produzieren. In Deutschland haben beispielsweise mittlerweile ca. 20 Prozent der
Einwohner*innen einen sogenannten Migrationshintergrund, bei den Journalist*innen sind es hingegen Schätzungen zufolge nur zwei bis vier Prozent.
Häufig sind sie zudem entweder automatisch für Migrationsthemen zuständig oder aber man überlässt ihnen diese Bereiche gerade nicht, weil ihnen
Voreingenommenheit unterstellt wird. Auch wenn man davon ausgeht, dass
sich Menschen, die potenziell selbst von kulturalisierenden Zuschreibungen betroffen sind, für Stereotypisierungen sensibler zeigen, so stellt sich die
Frage, ob sich Produktionsprozesse und Produkte schon allein dadurch fundamental ändern, dass die Drehbuchautorin einer britischen Fernsehserie
einen indischen Hintergrund hat oder der Nachrichtenredakteur eines deutschen Magazins einen türkischen. Denn Redaktionen bzw. Organisationen
beeinflussen die Menschen, die in ihnen arbeiten, in hohem Maß mit ihrer
Logik und Rationalität: Die Apparate sozialisieren ihre Mitglieder.
Journalist*innen wie Drehbuchautor*innen, Redakteur*innen wie Regisseur*innen lernen in ihrer Ausbildung, im Nachahmen von Kolleg*innen
und konfrontiert mit einem hohen Marktdruck die Regeln des Geschäfts.
Schnell wissen sie instinktiv, wie ein gut zu verkaufendes Produkt auszusehen
16
hat. Journalist*innen suchen nach Geschichten, die von klaren Konfrontationen erzählen; das Dramatische und Bedrohliche verspricht Aufmerksamkeit.
Stereotype bieten sich dabei schnell an, um sie zu gewinnen – seien es negative, wie das des kriminellen Schwarzen, der parasitär lebenden Roma, des
außerhalb der Gesellschaft stehenden Juden, des zur Gewalt und Terror neigenden Muslims oder des faulen Südeuropäers, seien es auf den ersten Blick
positive, wie das der tanzenden Inderin aus dem Bollywood-Film.
Die kritische Perspektive
Ein erster Schritt zur Veränderung der Prozesse in großen Institutionen ist
deren Analyse. Unter Journalist*innen und Redaktionsleiter*innen ist die
Bereitschaft zur Selbstreflexion unterschiedlich stark ausgeprägt. Bis heute
zeigen sich manche Journalist*innen, selbst leitende Redakteur*innen, unbeeindruckt sowohl von dem über Jahrzehnte in vielen Ländern erarbeiteten
medien- und kommunikationswissenschaftlichen Forschungsstand als auch
von der durch Minderheitenorganisationen vorgebrachten Kritik. Sie behaupten, sie spiegelten lediglich die Wirklichkeit und überließen es dem Publikum, sich eine Meinung zu bilden. Die Vorstellung, Berichterstattung sei »objektiv«, wenn Journalist*innen frei von politischer Kontrolle arbeiten können
und sich an die handwerklichen Regeln halten, ist in Teilen der Berufsgruppe
noch immer eine populäre Überzeugung.
Manche Medienmacher*innen blenden aus, dass jeder Text, jedes Bild und
jede Filmsequenz Ergebnis eines Konstruktions- und Selektionsprozesses
ist, das heißt der mehr oder weniger bewussten Wahl einer Perspektive. Tatsächlich ist im kommunikationswissenschaftlichen Sinn jeder Zeitungsartikel, jede Meldung auf einer Nachrichten-Website, jedes Pressefoto und jeder
Beitrag in den Fernsehnachrichten eine Inszenierung – auch dann, wenn die
Nachricht nicht erfunden ist und sich Journalist*innen bemühen, eigene politische Positionen aus der Präsentation eines Sachverhalts fernzuhalten. Wie
auch immer theoretisch, empirisch und praktisch die Autonomie von Journalist*innen beurteilt wird, sie können sich jedenfalls die unvermeidlichen Produktionsschritte bewusst machen und damit transparent umgehen. Soziale
Integration lässt sich unterstützen, wenn Medien aktuell und multiperspektivisch berichten und darauf bedacht sind, stigmatisierende und diskriminierende Stereotypisierungen von Minderheiten zu vermeiden. Der kritische
Blick ist die Voraussetzung der Diskussion darüber, inwieweit Medienagenden zu Mehrheitsagenden und Medienframes zu Mehrheitsframes werden.
Der vorliegende Band ist aus einer internationalen Konferenz der Akademie
des Jüdischen Museums Berlin in Kooperation mit dem Rat für Migration
17
Einleitung
hervorgegangen. Ein besonderer Dank geht an Betul Yilmaz, die maßgeblich
an der Organisation dieser Konferenz und der Kommunikation mit den Referent*innen beteiligt war. Dank gilt auch Angelika Königseder, die die Entstehung dieser Publikation koordiniert und alle deutschsprachigen Beiträge
lektoriert hat, ebenso wie Greg Sax, der für das Lektorat der englischsprachigen Texte verantwortlich war. Darüber hinaus danken wir den Übersetzer*innen Adam Blauhut, Allison Brown, Naomi Shulman und Kate Sturge
sowie Christine Marth und Marie Naumann, die im Jüdischen Museum Berlin die Schriftenreihe betreuen, in der dieser Band erscheint.
Jena, Berlin und Marburg im November 2015
Chapter 1
Media Production and
Institutional Structures
Augie Fleras
Theorizing Minority Misrepresentations
Reframing Mainstream Newsmedia as if
White Ethnic Media
Introduction: Contesting the Representational Frames
Mainstream newsmedia have long been accused of doing a disservice to
migrants, peoples and minorities.1 Representations2 of aboriginal peoples, racialized minorities, immigrants and asylum seekers are known to underrepresent in areas that count (“success”) but overrepresent in areas that don’t count
(“failure”), with a range of misrepresentations (“flaws”) in between.3 Pressure
to improve coverage notwithstanding, representations of migrants, minorities
and peoples continue to negatively frame them4 as (a) invisible, (b) problem
1 Rainer Geissler and Horst Pöttker, Media Integration of Ethnic Minorities in Germany
(Bielefeld: transcript, 2005); Elfriede Fursich, Media and the Representation of Others
(Malden, MA : UNESCO/Blackwell Publishing, 2010); Christine Larrazet and Isabelle
Rigoni, “Media and Diversity: A Century-Long Perspective on an Enlarged and Internationalized Field of Research,” InMedia 5 (October 2014), http://inmedia.revues.
org/747.
2 For our purposes, representations can be defined as mediated images of particular groups
of people from an ideological perspective. Representations (including visual images and
verbal texts and narratives) do not reflect (or represent) reality per se; to the contrary, they
re-present versions of reality that are cloaked in the language of normalcy in order to impart the gloss of the natural and universal. Stuart Hall, “Racist Ideologies and the Media,”
in Media Studies. A Reader, eds. Sue Thornham and Paul Marris (New York: University
Press, 1997), 271–282.
3 Augie Fleras, The Media Gaze. The Representations of Diversity in Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011); Journalists for Human Rights, ‘Buried Voices’: Media Coverage of
Aboriginal Issues in Ontario, Media Monitoring Report, 2010–2013 (August 2013). http://
www.jhr.ca/en/aboutjhr/downloads/publications/buried_voices.pdf.
4 Framing can be defined as a process of organizing information into packages (‘frames’)
that draw attention to some aspects of reality as desirable and acceptable and other aspects
as undesirable or irrelevant in the hope of encouraging a preferred reading of an issue,
event or person, i. e., one consistent with the interests of those doing the framing. Fleras,
Media Gaze; Robert Entman, “Framing. Toward a Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm,”
Journal of Communication 43, no. 4 (December 1993): 51–58; Robert Entman, “Framing
Bias: Media in the Distortion of Power,” Journal of Communication 57, no. 1 (March 2007):
163–173, DOI: 10.1111/j.1460-2466.2006.00336.x.
22
Augie Fleras
people, (c) stereotypical, (d) whitewashed,5 (e) ornamental and (f) the other.6
By contrast, ‘whitestream’ identities, experiences and interests are positively
framed as a tacitly assumed universal benchmark that normalizes as it privileges.7 Efforts to explain these misrepresentational tropes have varied: to one
side are prejudicial attitudes, implicit biases and discriminatory practices; to
the other side, institutional routines, workplace practices and commercial
imperatives related to audience ratings and advertising revenues (“a race for
eyeballs”8); to yet another side are those systemic biases9 whose one-sidedness
perpetuates an exclusionary effect. Of particular value are those explanations
that frame newsmedia as Eurocentric discourses in defence of dominant ideology, in effect exposing the representational biases of migrants/minorities/
peoples as racialized10 rather than racist, structural rather than attitudinal,
institutional rather than individual, patterned rather than random and systemic (“normalized”) rather than deliberate (“systematic”).
Most explanatory frameworks in this contested domain are valid to a
point. Yet none is entirely capable of accounting for a key representational
paradox: the continued misrepresentational bias in the mediated images of
migrants, minorities and peoples despite growing awareness of costs and con5 Whitewashed is employed in the sense of representing images of diversity and differences
so as to ensure they fit into frames that reflect, reinforce and advance “whitestream”
values, biases and realities. John Gabriel, Whitewash. Racialized Politics and the Media
(New York: Routledge, 1998).
6 Augie Fleras and Jean Lock Kunz, Media and Minorities in Canada (Toronto: Thompson
Publishing, 2001).
7 Sonya M. Alemán, “Locating Whiteness in Journalism Pedagogy,” Critical Studies in
Media Communication 31, no. 1 (2014): 72–88.
8 Phil Cook, “The Most Racist Part of the Zimmerman Trial Was the Media,” Huffington Post
Media (14 July 2013), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/phil-cooke-phd/the-most-racistpart-of-t_b_3595970.html.
9 In this paper, bias is not used in the sense of blatantly distorting or falsifying reality (as
in “distortion bias”) or of consciously producing biased content (as in “decision-making
bias”). Rather, a system bias both unconsciously produces and inadvertently reflects the
normal and seemingly neutral ways in which institutions are structured, workplaces
are organized, rewards are allocated and products and services are designed and delivered. Vanmala Hiranandani, “Diversity Management in the Canadian Workplace.
Towards an Antiracism Approach,” Urban Studies Research (2012): 1–13, http://dx.doi.
org/10.1155/2012/385806.
10 Racialized and racialization are inextricably connected. Racialization involves a socially constructed process by which those in positions of power impose negative racebased significance on targeted groups (or their activities) and subject them to differential treatment because of their placement as a race. With racialization, individuals and
groups are racially coded, i. e., racialized, that is, identified, named and categorized,
resulting in the imposition of race-based meanings that imply danger or inferiority
(Augie Fleras, Racisms in a Multicultural Canada (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier Press,
2014)). If racialization refers to a process, racialized represents the institutionalization of
the process at both individual and societal levels.
23
sequences. This representational impasse should come as no surprise; after
all, it’s been over 45 years since the Kerner Commission11 declared, “the media report and write from the standpoint of a White man’s world.” But the
prospect of representing diversity and differences in a balanced, objective and
contextual manner appears to go against the grain of a mediated logic.12 This
representational gridlock suggests it’s time to shift the burden of blame from
newsmedia “acting badly” to representations “acting logically” because of
what they are intrinsically inclined to do. I propose a theoretical framework
that scuttles the conventional wisdom taken to explain newsmedia misrepresentations of migrants, peoples and minorities. However counterintuitive this
assertion may appear on the surface, I will argue that mainstream newsmedia
may be interpreted as if they constituted white ethnic media whose ‘systemic
whiteness’13 informs the mediated bias of media-minority representations.
Reference to the concept of “systemic whiteness” is consequential. It not only
demonstrates how diversity discourses and minority frames are so structured
in a white Eurocentricity that even seemingly inclusive coverage is “couched
in compromise.”14 It also magnifies the magnitude of the challenge in fostering more representative representations.
In this paper, I contend that any theorizing of minority misrepresentations gains explanatory traction by reframing mainstream newsmedia as if
they were white ethnic media whose mediated images of peoples, migrants
and minorities superimpose a pro-white preference over an anti-minority
bias. The Eurocentric discourses that “filter” minority realities, experiences
and aspirations through the mediated prism of a white media lens are shown
to be systemic and consequential rather than systematic and contrived. The
ensuing argument points to a paradox: “Whitestream” media may be conscious of the criticism directed at them; however, more positive and inclusive
11 Kerner Commission, Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders
(Washington DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1968), 366.
12 Myria Georgiou, “Media Representations of Diversity: The Power of the Mediated
Image,” in Race and Ethnicity in the 21st Century, eds. Alice Bloch and John Solomos
(Hampshire: Palgrave McMillan, 2009): 166–181; Alemán, “Locating Whiteness.”
13 In contrast to those who see white privilege or entitlement as a state of mind (‘mindset’), systemic whiteness refers to its status and role as an unwritten organizing principle
of society and its institutions and policies. (See Alemán, “Locating Whiteness.”) More
specifically, systemic whiteness can be viewed as an ideology imbued with the power
to normalize white power and privilege; a universal standard against which others are
judged and criticized; a lens through which whites see themselves and others, without
awareness that they are doing so and an implicit Eurocentrism with a corresponding tendency to see, think and evaluate reality from the perspective of white interests and experiences taken as universal and superior. (See Gabriel, Whitewash.) See also the previous footnote entries for racialized and framing.
14 Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists: Color-blind Racism and the Persistence of
Racial Inequality in the United States (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003).
24
Augie Fleras
representations of migrants/minorities/peoples continue to elude them, given
the white-framing of diversity and difference along Eurocentric lines.15 I begin by reviewing the current status in Canadian scholarship of media representations of migrants, minorities and peoples. Continued newsmedia resistance to addressing the misrepresentational bias puts additional pressure on
reformulating the problem analysis by moving positively beyond conventional
explanations. The reframing of “whitestream” newsmedia as if they were white
ethnic media is central to this argument. Just as whites are known to constitute an ethnicity, regardless of whether they approve or are aware, so too may
mainstream newsmedia be interpreted as ethnicized media whose diversity
representations endorse a systemic white-frame bias rather than a systematic
anti-minority bigotry.16 To make this case, I show that a distinction between
mediated images of “good” (model) minorities vs. “bad” migrants embodies a
“systemic whiteness.” This distinction inspires my argument.
Surveying the Representational Bias in Canada’s
Newsmedia-Minority Relations: An Overview
It is commonly accepted within progressive circles that Canada’s newsmedia
have “bungled” the task of representing migrants, minorities and peoples.17
According to media critics, those diversities outside a preferred consumer
15 Frances Henry and Carol Tator, eds., Discourses of Domination. Racial Bias in the Canadian English-Language Press (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002); Race Forward, Moving the Race Conversation Forward. How the Media Covers Racism and Other
Barriers to Productive Racial Discourse, Part 1 (January 2014).
16 Jon E. Fox, Laura Morosanu, and Eszter Szilassy, “The Racialization of the New European
Migration to the UK ,” Sociology 46, no. 4 (2012): 680–695.
17 Minelle Mahtani, “Representing Minorities: Canadian Media and Minority Identities,”
Canadian Ethnic Studies 33, no. 3 (2002): 99–131; Yasmin Jiwani, Discourses of Denial.
Mediations on Race, Gender, and Violence (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006); Catherine
Murray, Not Another Solitude: Third Language Media Matter. Address to the Panel
on Heritage Languages, Integration, and Globalization (Ottawa: Library and Archives
Canada, 2009); Henry and Tator, Discourses of Domination; Jenna Hennebry and Bessma
Momani, “Introduction: Arab Canadians as Targeted Transnationals,” in Targeted Transnationals: The State, the Media, and Arab Canadians, eds. Jenna Hennebry and Bessma
Momani (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013), 1–14; Izumi Sakamoto et al., “An Overview of
Discourses of Skilled Immigrants and ‘Canadian Experience’: An English-Language
Print Media Analysis,” CERIS Working Paper No. 98 (Toronto: Ontario Metropolis Centre, 2013); Wendy Chan, “News Media Representations of Immigrants in the Canadian Criminal Justice System,” Working Paper Series (Vancouver: Metropolis British
Columbia, 2014); Brad Clark, “‘Walking Up a Down-Escalator’: The Interplay Between
Newsroom Norms and Media Coverage of Minority Groups,” InMedia 5 (September
2014), http://inmedia.revues.org/749.
25
demographic were (a) ignored as irrelevant, (b) stigmatized as inferior or
(c) pilloried as dangerous. Alternatively, they were portrayed as “troublesome
constituents” — problem people — who possessed problems or created problems
involving cost or inconvenience.18 A media fixation with the sordid and sensational glossed over the normal and routine by exaggerating the importance
of the exception or the extreme.19 Representations of migrants/minorities/
peoples were openly racist and demeaning, resulting in defamatory images
and derogatory representations at odds with the principles of Canada’s inclusive multiculturalism.20 Then, as now, migrants/minorities/peoples endured
dismissive representations in which they were (a) pigeon-holed into sports/
festival/crime/entertainment slots, (b) demonized as menaces to society (as
victims or victimizers), (c) scapegoated as the root of all of Canada’s social
problems, (d) “otherized” for being too different or not different enough, (e) refracted through the prism of Eurocentric fears and fantasies and (f) caricaturized by double standards that lampooned them regardless of what they did
or didn’t do. The end result was the slotting of migrants/minorities/peoples
into recurrent frames that resonate with the language of threat, problem or
conflict.21
To be sure, changes are discernible.22 An exclusive diet of monocultural
representation frames is gradually giving way to mediated images more reflective of, respectful of, and responsive to diversity and differences.23 More
polite and nuanced discourses are increasingly rejecting the one-dimensional
18 News stories about minorities continue to be negatively framed. For one year (from
12 February 2009 to 11 February 2010), I collected headline/header/footer data from
Canada’s two national dailies (the Globe and Mail and the National Post) from articles related to diversity and diversities as well as peoples, migrants, and minorities. Of
the 839 headlines over the one-year period, I deemed 71 percent to be negative, 8 percent positive, and the rest neutral. (See Fleras, Media Gaze; Henry and Tator, Discourses
of Domination.) A recent update, albeit on a much smaller scale (1–24 November 2014),
repeats the pattern (70 negative headers, 4 positive, and 16 neutral). The implications of
this negativity in fostering a ‘mean world syndrome’ pertaining to minorities should not
be underestimated. A more fearful population is more easily controlled and manipulated
into endorsing harsh policies of containment.
19 Eda Gemi, Iryna Ulasiuk, and Anna Triandafyllidou, “Migrants and Media Newsmaking
Practices,” Journalism Practices 7, no. 3 (2013): 266–281.
20 Fleras, Media Gaze.
21 Yasmin Jiwani, “Racism and the Media,” Stop Racism and Hate Collective (2012),
http://www.stopracism.ca; Sonya Cicci, “Normalizing Cultural Ideals to a White Society:
Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the Media,” Thinking and (Rethinking) Race (April 2014):
1–12, https://medium.com/thinking-and-rethinking-race/normalizing-cultural-ideals-toa-white-society-racial-and-ethnic-minorities-in-the-media-3cf5a698afee.
22 Sally Lehrman, “Creating an Inclusive Public Commons: Values and Structures in Journalism that can Promote Change” (see pp. 50–67 of this volume).
23 Fleras, Media Gaze.
26
Augie Fleras
caricatures of the past,24 partly because of a collective media cringe at being branded racist or reactionary.25 Mainstream media in Canada are loathe
to criticize migrants or government minority policy openly for fear of disturbing a national consensus or inciting a frosty consumer reaction. They
also take pains to avoid explicitly vilifying immigrants by stripping stories
of unnecessary references to race or religion (“race-tagging”) or, alternatively,
emphasizing the loyalty and law-abidingness of most new Canadians.26 Yet
negativity persists, albeit in a more oblique manner. For example, minorities,
peoples and migrants are rarely criticized on the basis of physical inferiority.
A categorical dislike is replaced by a situational antipathy predicated on the
premise that migrants/minorities/peoples are culturally incompatible or socially deviant.27 Migrants, peoples and minorities are demeaned by association with negative news contexts, including moral panics related to (a) crime,
public disorder and deviance; (b) so-called “reverse discrimination” against
whites; (c) religious fundamentalism; (d) home country troubles and (e) security or medical risks.28 This tainted-by-association frame tends to essentialize (“homogenize”) members of a race or ethnicity despite the complexity of
their lived realities.29
Scholarly efforts to explain persistent media misrepresentation of minorities, migrants and peoples span the spectrum from micro to macro. Explanations include hard-boiled business decisions that reflect market forces
and revenue streams; media personnel who unconsciously frame representations from a mainstream (Eurocentrically white) perspective; traditional
news production protocols, including the 24/7 agenda-driven news cycle and
an exclusionary reliance on familiar sources and voices of authority;30 deeply
24 Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race and Representation After 9/11
(New York: New York University Press, 2012).
25 William McGowan, Coloring the News. How Political Correctness has Corrupted American Journalism (New York: Encounter Books, 2001).
26 Mark Silk, “Islam and the American News Media Post September 11,” in Mediating Religion. Studies in Media, Religion, and Culture, eds. Jolyon Mitchell and Sophia Marriage
(New York: T. and T. Clark, a Continuum Imprint, 2008): 73–88.
27 Yolande Pottie-Sherman and Rima Wilkes, “Good Code Bad Code: Exploring the Immigration-Nation Dialectic Through Media Coverage of the Herouxville ‘Code of Life’
Document,” Migration Studies 2, no. 2 (2014): 189–211.
28 Jessika ter Wal, Leen d’Haenans, and Joyce Koeman, “(Re)presentation of Ethnicity in EU
and Dutch Domestic News: A Quantitative Analysis,” Media, Culture, and Society 27, no.
6 (2005): 937–950; Simon Cottle, ed., Ethnic Minorities and the Media: Changing Cultural
Boundaries (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 2005); Charles T. Adeyanju and Temitope Oriola, “‘Not in Canada’: The Non-Ebola Panic and Media Representation of the Black
Community,” African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies 4, no. 1 (2010): 32–49.
29 Arlene Davila, Latino Spin: Public Image and the Whitewashing of Race (New York: New
York University Press, 2008); Fleras, Racisms in a Multicultural Canada.
30 Clark, “‘Walking Up a Down-Escalator.’”
27
ingrained prejudice among media personnel; structural barriers such as news
values and news gathering routines that impede inclusion and systemic biases
wired into the founding assumptions and foundational principles of the
industry’s unwritten constitutional order.31 Unlike a systematic bias, which
deliberately omits or distorts, a systemic bias entails a white framing that
inadvertently yet overwhelmingly prioritizes the negative over the positive,
conflict over cooperation, the sensational over substance, deviance over the
typical, one-sidedness over multifacetedness and the episodic over the thematic and contextual. Even a commitment to diversity as content does not
necessarily exclude those discourses of domination that normalize whiteness
by racializing diversity as a departure from the norm.32
Widespread criticism and advocacy notwithstanding, newsmedia appear
incapable of improving the quality of minority representations — either they
don’t know how, or they don’t care.33 Newsmedia continue to process information by way of a white-frame that whitewashes race, ethnicity and aboriginality without openly denigrating diversity and difference.34 Consider
how a racialized white-frame frames whiteness as culturally superior in
achievement compared to racialized non-whites; embraces white controlled
institutions and white privilege as unremarkable; perpetuates stereotypes by
essentializing the lived realities of minorities and endorses diversity as long as
it doesn’t cost or inconvenience and, in the process, confirms a mainstream
right to define what counts as differences and what differences count.35 Not
surprisingly, media decision-makers and gatekeepers may not be consciously
biased toward the other because of “systemic whiteness”. Seemingly race-neutral representations that on the surface appear to treat everyone the same may
be deeply racialized when whites and non-whites alike are shoehorned into
Eurocentric language and imagery.36 White-frame representations assume
white Eurocentricity as a universal norm with the result that migrants/minorities/peoples are framed as beings both novel and foreign (“fish-out-ofwater stories”) rather than normal and naturalized. Minority representations
continue to be framed in ways that superimpose a preferred way of organizing social reality consistent with mainstream ideals and normative expectations. Who, then, can be surprised when whites and non-whites are known to
relate differently to mainstream media? Whites see themselves painted into
31
32
33
34
35
Fleras, The Media Gaze.
Henry and Tator, Discourses of Domination; Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists.
Clark, “‘Walking Up a Down-Escalator’”; Journalists for Human Rights, ‘Buried Voices.’
Race Forward, Moving the Race Conversation Forward.
Joe Feagin, The White Racial Frame. Centuries of Racial Framing and Counter-Framing
36 Elizabeth Goodyear-Grant, Gendered News. Media Coverage and Electoral Politics in
Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013).
28
Augie Fleras
the media picture as normal or unexceptional whereas visible minorities find
themselves racialized and excluded by discursive frames that prejudge without the prejudice.
Whitewashing Mainstream Media as White Ethnic Media
All mass media content could be analyzed from the experience of what is revealed
about ethnicity. The New York Times, for example, could be read as an ethnic newspaper although it is not explicitly or consciously so.37
A truism in communication studies is the tacitly assumed distinction between mainstream newsmedia and ethnic newsmedia. Mainstream media
consist of those private (commercial) or public-service outlets that cater to the
widest affluent audience. They are relatively large scale in operation; reach,
i. e., they produce content for a generalized other; position themselves near
the middle in terms of bias and use a mainstream language as a medium of
communication. By contrast, ethnic media are thought to target specific ethnic minorities by providing information that is community based and culturally sensitive as well as responsive to and situationally located within a
transnational field of information.38 Ethnic media are thought to differ from
mainstream media because of content that is about, and produced, distributed and consumed by migrants, minorities and peoples in a language or cultural idiom that resonates with their experiences and interests. Yet this divide
is problematic. How, for example, ought one categorize global media giants
such as Al Jazeera with its 50 million viewers worldwide: ethnic or mainstream? Where exactly do mainstream media end and ethnic media begin,
given that ethnic media are becoming more mainstream in their operations,
whereas mainstream media are tapping into ethnic media niches to engage
with new audiences?
Both ethnic and mainstream newsmedia share commonalities at one level.
They both include process (involving the targeting of a preferred demographic), imperatives (relying on advertising and subscriptions for survival),
37 Stephen Riggins, ed., Ethnic Minority Media. An International Perspective (Newbury
Park: Sage, 1992), 2.
38 Karim H. Karim, The Media of Diaspora (New York: Routledge, 2003); Georgiou, “Media Representations of Diversity”; Murray, Not Another Solitude; Matthew D. Matsaganis,
Vikki S. Katz, and Sandra J. Ball-Rokeach, Understanding Ethnic Media. Producers, Consumers, and Societies (California: Sage, 2010); Larrazet and Rigoni, “Media and Diversity”; Clare Johansson and Simone Battiston, “Ethnic Print Media in Australia,” Media
History 20, no. 4 (2014): 416–430.
29
assumptions (reflecting the realities and advancing the interests of the intended demographic) and outcomes (informing by communicating with core
audiences (“bonding”) while connecting with the world (“bridging”). Just as
ethnic newsmedia constitute spaces where migrants, minorities and peoples
communicate interests, make claims and mobilize identities,39 so too do
mainstream newsmedia steer a difficult course between balancing universalist appeals and market imperatives with particularistic aims and social obligations.40 Newsmedia in both domains are known to follow a time-proven
revenue trajectory, namely, track what is profitable and repackage content accordingly to make it newsworthy. They may even share a commitment to provide readers/viewers with “news they can use.” For newcomers, this facilitates
their integration into Canada; for mainstream whites, it is a meaning-making machine that secures a positive collective identity while allaying fears and
confusions over rapid change and spiralling hyperdiversity. Yet an important
caveat disrupts the comparison. Unlike ethnic newsmedia, mainstream newsmedia possess the power and resources for setting agendas, framing national
debates, defining public discourses and advancing vested interests. And with
that power comes a responsibility to report on what the public needs to know
instead of what it wants to hear.41
Taking a cue from Stephen Riggins’ (1992) prescient throwaway line cited
above, I advance the seemingly counterintuitive claim that mainstream media may be interpreted as ethnic media that service the Eurocentric interests of predominantly white constituencies — neither explicitly nor assertively
white but just inherently (“systemically”) so.42 Or, as Charles Husband writes
of the “culture blindness” at play, “For the majority media specialists, their
own ethnicity is capable of being routinely rendered invisible and unknowable, and consequently remains implicit and potentially dangerous…”43 But
this myopia toward white privilege is not necessarily shared by migrants, minorities and peoples who perceive “whitestream” newsmedia as white spaces
indifferent to minority success stories; hostile to any criticism of the status
quo or oblivious to their identities, experiences and aspirations beyond celebration and crime.44 Even a newsmedia commitment to address diversity
39 Myria Georgiou, “Diaspora in the Digital Era: Minorities and Media Representation,”
Journal of Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe 12, no. 4 (2013): 80–99.
40 Cottle, Ethnic Minorities.
41 Journalists for Human Rights, ‘Buried Voices.’
42 See also John Herrman, “The New Ethnic Media,” The Awl (30 September 2014), http://
www.theawl.com/2014/09/the-new-white-ethnic-media.
43 Charles Husband, “Minority Ethnic Media As Communities of Practice: Professionalism
and Identity Politics in Interaction,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31, no. 3
(2005): 467.
44 Cottle, Ethnic Minorities.
30
Augie Fleras
perpetuates a pro-white attitude that tacitly assumes whiteness as the norm.
After all, framing race, ethnicity and aboriginality in the language45 of the
“whitestream,” even with the best intentions, tends to whitewash diversity. The
following discursive frames bolster a white-frame description of social reality
whose “systemic whiteness” distorts or denies the experiences and realities of
those on the wrong side of the racialized divide.
Blaming the victim: the assumption that every individual in a meritocratic
society can make it if they work hard, play by the rules, take advantage of
opportunities and assume personal responsibility. This frame invisiblizes the
structural barriers confronting racialized minorities who must achieve success in a system designed neither to reflect their realities nor advance their
interests.46
Individualizing racism: the assumption that racism is a personal prejudice
or randomly expressed rather than routinized as power systemically embedded in social structures and institutions.
An ahistorical perspective: the dismissal of cumulative inequalities or the
persistence of colonialism on the grounds that the past is passed and it’s time
to move on.47
Decontextualizing reality: the episodic and sensationalistic, rather than
thematic and situational in the framing of newsworthiness. This frame reinforces victim blaming while ignoring root causes.48
45 Seemingly neutral language and images serve as proxies to disguise a dislike, not in the
blatant sense of open vilification but through the accumulation of snide asides (“jumping the queue”), mocking references (“Allah of the people”), politely coded subtexts
(“those people”) and “fish-out-of-water” stories that ironically provide a reminder of
how bad things really are. The potency of language for social control is not understood by
the general public in whose perception language is little more than a postal system, that is,
a relatively neutral system of conveyance for the transmission of messages between
sender and receiver independently created through a process called “thinking”. Nothing could be further from the truth. Language (or speech) is intimately bound up with
peoples’ experiences of the world and their efforts to convey that experience to others.
It’s neither neutral nor value free nor a passive or mechanical transmitter of information. Language is a socially constructed convention loaded with values and preferences
that encourage preferred readings of reality while dismissing other interpretations as
incompatible or inconsequential. Clearly, there is much value in acknowledging that
language is a powerful force for defining what is desirable and acceptable, normal
and important. More importantly, as Pierre Bourdieu (Language and Symbolic Power,
Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991) could have put it, the micro-aggressions implicit in the
context of language are not about words that hurt but about the hidden patterns of power
relations that are reflected, reinforced and advanced through the use of language in
everyday discourses and practices. That alone makes it doubly important to be aware of
language as a regime of power and control in defense of dominant ideologies.
46 Gemi, Ulasiuk, and Triandafyllidou, “Migrants and Media Newsmaking Practices.”
47 Race Forward, Moving the Race Conversation Forward.
48 Ibid.
31
Problematizing deep diversity: the primacy of a liberal universalism (“our
commonalities as freewheeling individuals supersede differences between
groups”) as the basis for entitlement and recognition.49 This inability to frame
diversity and differences except as superficial or abnormal, or as conflict or
carnival, is consequential. It undermines the interests of those migrants/minorities/peoples who want their differences (from religion to socioeconomic
status) to be taken seriously.
Invoking a post-racial Canada: the criticism of those who insist on playing
the “race card” in a supposedly race-blind society where neither race nor racism matter in determining who gets what.50
Taking white normativity as the universal standard: this frame pounces on
any minority belief or practice at odds with core values related to freedom,
democracy, reason and tolerance. Minorities are judged on the basis of their
commitment and conformity to the “whitestream” or, alternatively, if their
creativity and achievement are aligned along dominant lines.51
There are consequences to locating whiteness in diversity representations,
even if these discursive frames say more about white fantasies and fears than
about minority realities. An emphasis on the personal (rather than the structural), the overt (rather than the covert and systemic) and the prejudicial
(rather than the institutional) in framing mediated images of minorities reflects and reinforces the perceptions and realities of those whose privileged
status permits the luxury of living in a different reality.52
The bifurcation of immigrants and asylum seekers into opposing frames
exemplifies the “systemic whiteness” behind newsmedia representations.53
Mediated images approve of “good” (i. e., model) immigrants who fit whites’
ideal image of immigrants, are thought to embrace capitalist and liberal values and establish productive families that contribute to growing the economy. Dedicated to their new home and successful within it by “acting white”
and downplaying “unwhitelike” attributes,54 model minorities legitimize the
myths and virtues of meritocracy, in effect privileging the virtues of white
49 Augie Fleras, Unequal Relations. An Introduction to Race, Ethnic, and Aboriginal Dynamics in Canada, 7th edition (Toronto: Pearson, 2012).
50 Race Forward, Moving the Race Conversation Forward; Bonilla-Silva, Racism without
Racists.
51 Paul Spoonley and Andrew Butcher, “Reporting Superdiversity: The Mass Media and
Immigration in New Zealand,” Journal of Intercultural Studies 30, no. 4 (2009): 355–372.
52 Fleras, Racisms in a Multicultural Canada.
53 Harald Bauder, “Immigration Debate in Canada: How Newspapers Reported, 1996–2004,”
Journal of International Migration and Integration 9, no. 3 (2008): 289–310; Sakamoto et
al., An Overview of Discourses; Alemán, “Locating Whiteness.”
54 See also Kenji Yoshino, Covering. The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights, Reprint Edition (New York: Random House, 2007).
32
Augie Fleras
tolerance and universal Eurocentricity.55 Yet stereotyping Asian-Canadians
as uncomplaining, docile and obedient (i. e., as model minorities) may perversely if inadvertently generate an infantilizing discourse that frames them
as dependent, lacking agency and undifferentiated.56 Muslim-Canadians, too,
are dichotomized into bipolar camps.57 “Good” Muslims are positively framed
as modern, secular and Westernized in addition to being hyperpatriotic and
unflinchingly supportive of the War on Terror. “Bad” Muslims are negatively
framed as anti-modern, violent, oppressive and untrustworthy and, thus,
fundamentally different from and at odds with mainstream society and
deeply deserving of Western condemnation and military intervention.58 The
controlling effect of such coverage cannot be casually dismissed. All MuslimCanadians are demonized with a backlash of suspicion and recrimination
from the actions of a few.
Asylum seekers are no less negatively framed, though not all of them. Those
who flee repressive regimes whose interests clash with those of the global
north are perceived as deserving, in part because they confirm Canada’s supposed moral superiority.59 Refugees who are plucked by the Canadian government or private sponsors from United Nations refugee camps are usually
framed as deserving and rarely attract media attention. By contrast, “bad”
asylum seekers are defined as those who self select for entry into Canada on
the basis of their needs instead of Canadian priorities.60 Their unannounced
arrival en masse amounts to an unforgiveable slight to Canada’s sovereign
right in determining who and how many to admit. They also are stigmatized
as “troublesome constituents” who pose security risks; steal jobs from “real”
Canadians; destabilize the labour market; cheat the welfare system; strain resource-starved social, medical and municipal services; create congestion and
55 Chauncey DeVega, “The ‘Niggerization’ of Michael Brown by the Ferguson Police Department and the Right Wing Media,” Daily Kos, 18 August 2014, http://m.dailykos.com.
56 Darrell Hanamoto, Monitored Peril. Asian Americans and the Politics of Representation
(St Paul: University of Minnesota Press, 1995); Dan Cui and Jennifer Kelly, “‘Too Asian?’
Or the Invisible Citizen on the Other Side of the Nation,” Journal of International Migration and Integration 14, no. 1 (2013): 157–174.
57 Ross Perigoe, “Muslims and Media” (paper presented at the Congress of Social Sciences,
York University, Toronto, 29–31 May 2006).
58 Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims; Hennebry and Momani, “Introduction: Arab Canadians”;
Dorota A. Gozdecka, Selen A. Ercan, and Magdalena Kmak, “From Multiculturalism to
Post-Multiculturalism: Trends and Paradoxes,” Journal of Sociology 50, no. 1 (2014): 51–64.
59 Ainsley Jenicek, Alan D. Wong, and Edward Ou Jin Lee, “Dangerous Shortcuts: Representations of Sexual Minority Refugees in the Post-9/11 Canadian Press,” Canadian Journal of Communication 34, no. 4 (2009): 635–658.
60 Sean Hier and Joshua Greenberg, “News Discourse and the Problematization of Chinese
Migration to Canada,” in Discourses of Domination: Racial Bias in the Canadian EnglishLanguage Press, eds. Frances Henry and Carol Tator (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2002), 138–162; Bauder, “Immigration Debate.”
33
crowding; compromise Canada’s highly touted quality of life; take advantage
of educational opportunities without making a corresponding commitment
to Canada; engage in illegal activities, such as selling drugs and smuggling,
and imperil Canada’s national unity by refusing to conform or participate.61
Their being labelled as “problem people” is compounded by a fixation on illegal entries via queue jumping and human smuggling rings, anxieties over
security and anger over the cost of processing and settlement.62 Exaggerated
and negative coverage of those who transgress the norms of acceptable behaviour may not be intended to incite moral panic.63 But, in reinforcing the adage
that what representational hype doesn’t say may prove to be as distorting as
what it does say, it may stampede an already edgy public into supporting policies and programs that put migrants, minorities and peoples in their ‘proper
place’ in a racialized society.64 Needless to say, any shared sense of humanity
with the ‘stranger within’ is elusive when mediated images are embossed with
the stamp of white paranoia and mainstream nightmares.65
Conclusion: Mediated Images Matter
In this paper, I have made the following abundantly clear. First, mainstream
media tend to exclude migrants/minorities/peoples by virtue of the fact that
they constitute white ethnic media that are pro-white rather than anti-minority
in framing coverage of diversity and difference. Second, a commitment to
more inclusive newsmedia representations of migrants/minorities/peoples
may, ironically, perpetuate an exclusionary discourse when mediated images
of race, ethnicity and aboriginality are coded (that is, “framed”) in the language of the preferred norm of white Eurocentricity. Newsmedia misrepresentations of diversity and difference are neither random nor accidental, according
to the logic of a racialized media approach.66 Nor are they something out of the
ordinary, that is, a departure from an otherwise inclusive institutional norm.
Mainstream newsmedia are anything but neutral or value free as systems of
61 Chan, News Media Representations.
62 Alan Simmons, Immigration and Canada: Global and Transnational Perspectives (Toronto: Canadian Scholars, 2010); Rima Wilkes, Catherine Corrigall-Brown, and Danielle
Ricard, “Nationalism and Media Coverage of Indigenous People’s Collective Action in
Canada,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 34, no. 4 (2010): 41–59.
63 Jiwani, “Racism and the Media.”
64 Hier and Greenberg, “News Discourse”; Augie Fleras, Immigration Canada: Evolving Perspectives and Emergent Challenges (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014).
65 DeVega, “The ‘Niggerization’ of Michael Brown.”
66 See also Goodyear-Grant, Gendered News.
34
Augie Fleras
communication. Rather, their representations of peoples/migrants/minorities
are layered with inherent values and intrinsic biases in defining (a) who we
are as a society, (b) what our values and norms are, (c) what happens to those
who transgress these values and (d) how we ought to see the world and the
people in it,67 especially those who lack meaningful first-hand contact with
migrants, minorities and peoples and look to newsmedia representations as
their primary source of information. The result is a misrepresentation of
diversity and difference that is institutional, systemic and institutionalized:
institutional because of misrepresentations that are routine, repetitive and predictable rather than isolated, idiosyncratic and haphazard; systemic because
of the seemingly unintended yet negative consequences of those representations that, though themselves free of any explicit bias, are implicitly biased
and institutionalized because biases are inherent to the working assumptions
and foundational principles of the media’s constitutional order. The resultant
pro-white representations are normalized through an unconscious Eurocentric filter that white-frames “raw” facts into mediated images consistent with a
white-centred worldview.
To be sure, the similarity between ethnic and mainstream media has its limits (for example, differences in the power to set agendas and the responsibilities that accompany being an instrument of power). But more intellectual capital can be gleaned by painting the mainstream newsmedia into the ethnicity
picture than by isolating them as constitutive of a universal norm or standard.
After all, refusal to acknowledge white ethnicity may be more problematic
than acknowledging it. Denying its existence may have the effect of privileging whiteness as the universal norm instead of another manifestation of the human experience. Refusal to ethnicize the dominant sector tends to privilege the
mainstream as the unacknowledged standard of normalcy — but at the cost of
masking the socially constructed and ideologically loaded nature of “systemic
whiteness”. In other words, ignoring white ethnicity risks reinforcing its hegemony by naturalizing whiteness as normal and necessary.68 The fact that consciousness of one’s own ethnicity must precede an understanding of the ethnic
other makes it doubly important to eliminate the invisibility of the white ethnic mainstream by interrogating its claim to normalcy.69 Truly inclusive representational media — in which no one is excluded or denied because of their
race or ethnicity (“inclusion”) but everyone is included and embraced precisely
because of their differences (“inclusivity”)70 — will begin to emerge only when
67 Jiwani, “Racism and the Media.”
68 Paul Spoonley, Racism and Ethnicity in New Zealand (Auckland: Oxford University
Press, 1993).
69 Steve Garner, Whiteness. An Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2007).
70 Fleras, Immigration Canada.
35
whites include themselves as part of the ethnic kaleidoscope rather than take
themselves to be the grout that consolidates, confines and controls the mosaic.
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38
Augie Fleras
Abstract
Ein Großteil der kanadischen Forschung über die Beziehung von Medien und
Minderheiten macht das Augenfällige deutlich: die kontinuierliche Stereotypisierung von First Nations, Migrant*innen und Minderheiten als minderwertig, nicht dazugehörig oder bedrohlich. Viele sehen diese falschen Darstellungen in individuellen Vorurteilen oder institutioneller Diskriminierung
begründet. Wie gültig diese Erklärungsversuche auch sein mögen, so ist es
doch an der Zeit, diesen Ansatz, der von einer expliziten Feindschaft gegenüber Minderheiten ausgeht, hinter uns zu lassen. Dieser Aufsatz legt dar, dass
eine Neukonzeptualisierung der Mainstream-Medien als Medien einer weißen ethnischen Gruppe zwar nicht ohne Weiteres nachvollziehbar erscheinen
mag, sich aber als aufschlussreich erweist. Vorgeschlagen wird ein Erklärungsmodell für die Theoretisierung der medialen Repräsentation, das anerkennt, dass eine systemische pro-weiße Ausrichtung schwerer wiegt als die
systematische Intoleranz gegenüber Minderheiten. Der Beitrag zeigt auch,
dass Nachrichtenredaktionen, die sich für eine inklusivere Darstellung einsetzen, ironischerweise einen exkludierenden Diskurs reproduzieren, wenn
sie erneut Bilder von Migranten/Minderheiten/First Nations zeigen, die von
weißen eurozentristischen Mustern durchzogen sind. Mit Bezug auf das Konzept der »systemic whiteness« (»systemisches Weißsein«) wird eine innovative
Perspektive angeboten, um neue Impulse in die Debatten um die falsche mediale Darstellung von Diversität und Differenzen zu bringen.
Prof. Dr. Augie Fleras is a Professor (adjunct) of Sociology at the University of Waterloo,
Canada. He received his doctorate at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand,
on the topic (broadly speaking) related to “The Politics of Indigeneity” — an interest he
maintains into the present. As the author of some 30 books, in addition to numerous
articles, his main areas of research focus on the politics of diversity, including multiculturalism, racisms, and immigration; the representational basis/bias of media-minority
relations; and general issues related to social inequality and social problems in Canada. His most recent publications include Racisms in a Multicultural Canada (2014,
Wilfrid Laurier University Press) and Immigration Canada (2014, University of British Columbia Press).
Anamik Saha
From the Politics of Representation to
the Politics of Production
Introduction
In the UK, the topic of minority representation in the media is the theme
of a recurring debate. Perhaps its most infamous incident occurred in 2001,
when Greg Dyke, then the Director General of the BBC , described the institution as “hideously white.”1 In more recent times, the influential black British comedian Lenny Henry has began a campaign to convince broadcasters
to ring-fence money “for BAME [black and minority ethnic] productions and
programmes as they do for the nations and regions” with the campaign’s supporters threatening to boycott the television license fee unless broadcasters
proactively address the falling numbers of racial and ethnic minorities in
the industry.2 These examples come from television, but we see a similar discourse, with its emphasis on recruitment and numbers, across all of the sectors of the cultural industries, particularly journalism, publishing and the
arts, including theatre. It is my contention, however, that increasing the numbers of minorities working off-screen, while a welcome objective, will do very
little to improve the representation of minorities on-screen.
To be clear, I am not claiming that these initiatives should not be pursued! Issues of discrimination and prejudice in the workplace, and the experiences and working lives of minorities working in the media industries,
are, of course, critical. But I do want to challenge the notion that a more diverse workforce will automatically lead to more enlightening or, at the very
least, less damaging representations of minorities. The creation and wellbeing
of a diverse media workforce is important, but, for me, the nature and quality of portrayals of racial, ethnic and religious minorities, and the potential of
these images to contribute to a more progressive form of multiculture and a
more inclusive version of national identity, is the key issue and must be our
main focus.
1 Amelia Hill, “Dyke: BBC Is Hideously White,” The Guardian, 7 January 2001, http://
www.theguardian.com/media/2001/jan/07/uknews.theobserver1.
2 Tara Conlan, “Lenny Henry Campaign: Back TV Diversity or We’ll Boycott Licence Fee,”
The Guardian, 23 April 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/apr/23/lennyhenry-campaign-tv-diversity-licence-fee.
40
Anamik Saha
Part 1. Approaching Minority Cultural Production
In some ways, people whom British policy-makers like to label BAME appear
in the UK’s media, particularly in broadcasting, more than ever before. But, as
the adage goes, it’s not quantity that matters but quality. Media scholars have
shown how representations of minorities continue to slip into the same stereotypes that reduce the diversity of portrayals of minority experience, to a narrow range of racialist tropes. On the apparently positive side, we find superficial celebrations of multiculturalism, for instance, of ethnic food, carnival
and melas, what Tariq Modood describes as a discourse of “steel bands, saris
and somosas.”3 Post-9/11 representations of minorities have taken a darker
turn expressed by narrow racialist tropes: “terrorism, violence, conflict,”4 or
“‘asylum seekers,’ ‘black gun crime,’ ‘freedom of speech,’ the ‘clash of civilizations’ and most of all ‘the War on Terror.’”5 Specifically focusing on Islamophobia in the media, the journalist Abdul Rehman-Malik states, “The fact
is we don’t see a diversity of real Muslim experience. The fact is, what we see
is categorized into beards, scarves, halal meat, terrorists, forced marriage.”6
My own research has focused on the representation in the media of British South Asians, which is nearly always configured within a binary opposition: desire or fear. Representations either take the form of exoticized, fetishized difference (colourful weddings, spirituality, spicy curries, Bollywood
dancing) or primitive and threatening Otherness (terrorism, forced marriage,
Sharia law). An even more disturbing dimension of this is that it is often Asian
media practitioners themselves who are behind such representations. Subsequently, my research has looked into the production process of factual and
fictional depictions of Asians in the media to discover how cultural industries
work to reproduce neocolonial discourses of race and ethnicity.
Research into race and the media can be characterized by two approaches.
The first is policy-influenced and focuses on the experiences of minorities
working in the media.7 This approach takes in issues of discriminative hiring
3 Tariq Modood, Not Easy Being British: Colour, Culture and Citizenship (London: Runnymede Trust and Trentham Books, 1992).
4 Mukti J. Campion, Look Who’s Talking: Cultural Diversity, Public Service Broadcasting
and the National Conversation (Oxford: Nuffield College, 2005), 4.
5 Sarita Malik, “‘Keeping It Real’: The Politics of Channel 4’s Multiculturalism, Mainstreaming and Mandates,” Screen 49, no. 3 (2008), 348.
6 Anamik Saha, “‘Beards, Scarves, Halal Meat, Terrorists, Forced Marriage’: Television Industries and the Production of ‘Race,’” Media, Culture & Society 34, no. 4 (2012): 424–438.
7 Campion, Look Who’s Talking; Ben O’Loughlin, “The Operationalization of the Concept
‘Cultural Diversity’ in British Television Policy and Governance,” Centre for Research on
Socio-Cultural Change, Working Paper no. 27 (November 2006), http://www.cresc.ac.uk/
medialibrary/workingpapers/wp27.pdf.
From the Politics of Representation to the Politics of Production
41
practices and nepotism, the politics/ethics of quotas, glass ceilings and retention. But while it rightly exposes the institutional racism of the media, it does
not really focus on media texts and too easily assumes that increasing the
numbers of minorities will fix the problem of representation.
The second approach focuses on media texts and issues of representation
and consists of two different methods. The first comes from a policy/social
scientific perspective (particularly in journalism studies) and utilizes content
and framing analysis to monitor the ways in which minorities feature in news
stories. The second is a cultural studies approach, which is more generally interested in popular culture and uses a deconstructive form of textual analysis
to explore the politics of representation in relation to issues of power, empire
and neocolonialism. The latter method gives the best and most sophisticated
critique of hegemonic representations of race but, as it is post-structuralist in
its outlook, is less engaged with issues of praxis. The former is better at formulating counter-strategies, including petitioning and organising around single
issues, and promoting advocacy/media literacy, but I question the extent to
which these strategies can really challenge entrenched neocolonial representations of the Other.
In order effectively to tackle racism in the media, what we need then is a
novel, multi-faceted and holistic approach to studying media representations
of minoritized groups that thinks through the experience of BAME practitioners and media representation together. Such an approach needs, firstly,
to focus on the politics of representation and take seriously media texts
(entertainment as well as factual). Secondly, there needs to be a focus on the
labour that goes into the making of representations of minorities in order
to see how the process of production shapes the way the text appears to the
consumer. Thirdly, we need to pay attention to the political economy of the
media which shapes the cultures of production that media workers need to negotiate and which both constrains and enables their work in different ways.
By focusing on these three dimensions, we begin to get a more complex theoretical grasp of the relationships among structure, agency and text and of the
epistemologies of race. But, more practically, we are able to see how representations of minorities are shaped by the political-economic and social contexts
of the cultural industries. Put another way, in order to understand why media
representations of racial/ethnic/religious groups take the (reductive) forms
that they do and construct interventions that will disrupt this damaging process, we need to pay closer attention to the cultures of production within
which such representations are formed.
42
Anamik Saha
Part 2. Producing the British Asian Cultural Commodity
In order to illustrate the production-led approach that I propose, I want to draw
from my research into British South Asian cultural production and the experiences of Asians working in three media/cultural sectors: television, publishing and theatre. The research was conducted over the course of one year and
included participant observation and interviews with over 50 mostly Asian
“symbol creators” (filmmakers, authors, playwrights, screenwriters and actors),
creative managers (producers, editors and marketing and sales personnel)
and media executives. Each industry was chosen for its distinct political economy: publishing is market-based, theatre is heavily subsidized by the state
and television in the UK is a hybrid of public-service and commercial models. But in each we see certain patterns of minority production recurring, as I
shall describe.
The most fundamental issue for British Asian cultural producers, specifically those looking to tell stories about marginalized experiences, is whether
their narratives make it into the media, that is, whether a broadcaster commissions their idea for a series, a publisher buys their book manuscript or an
arts body funds their theatre production. This basic issue is the focus of much
policy discourse. (Indeed, an event hosted by the Diversity Unit of Channel 4,
an independent broadcaster with a public service remit, that I attended centred around providing practical information that would help up-and-coming
black and Asian filmmakers get commissions.8) An equally fundamental issue is what happens to the minority-produced text — w hich in this chapter I
label the “Asian cultural commodity”9 — once it is commissioned or bought.
It is in fact the stage between being selected for production and being distributed to audiences where minority producers encounter particular difficulties. My research found two things that happen to an Asian cultural commodity once it is commissioned: it is either ghettoized or sensationalized. In
other words, it is marginalized to the periphery of the market, or it is placed
8 Saha, “‘Beards, Scarves, Halal Meat, Terrorists, Forced Marriage.’”
9 The expression “Asian cultural commodity” is adapted from Dwyer and Crang’s notion of
“ethnicized cultural commodities”. Claire Dwyer and Philip Crang, “Fashioning Ethnicities: The Commercial Spaces of Multiculture,” Ethnicities 2, no. 3 (2002): 410–430. In this
instance, it refers to cultural texts that foreground (South) Asian cultural identities in
their narratives. I recognise the label is far from ideal and is in fact in danger of essentializing Asian identity further, but I use it in a way that draws from Stuart Hall’s invocation of the “new ethnicities” moment, which recognizes how ethnicity, for all its problems,
gives British Asians a “location from which to speak”. Stuart Hall, “New Ethnicities,” in
Stuart Hall, Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, eds. David Morley and Kuan-Hsing
Chen (London: Routledge, 1996).
43
in the centre but presented in a way that over-determines its supposed ethnic identity.
Examples of marginalisation of the Asian cultural commodity were found
in each of the industries of study. For instance, in television many Asian producers and directors described how their programmes were broadcast outside of primetime (usually late at night) and received little promotion from
the channel. Similarly in the theatre, Asian playwrights and producers complained that at best they get a limited run of shows at smaller theatres which,
in turn, limits press exposure. And in publishing, books dealing with minority experiences were rarely featured in the main promotional displays of
bookstores. Indeed, at the time of my research, the trade magazine The Book
Seller was running a campaign called “Books For All” that encouraged book
sellers to foreground a more diverse range of books in their stores in order to
attract minority readers as well as promote minority authors.
The epistemological consequences of being relegated to the periphery or
positioned, at best, according to the logic of what Stuart Hall10 calls “segregated visibility” were clear to my respondents. As an Asian filmmaker told
me, “You can make the best thing in the world, but if people don’t know about
it they’re not going to watch it. So you’re kind of dead in the water.” Thus, marginalization of this kind limits the exposure of Asian cultural commodities
and, on a symbolic level, represents the under-recognition of minority communities. In fact, for my respondents working in subsidized sectors like the
performing arts or public-service broadcasting the commissioning of Asian
cultural commodities which then receive little, if any, promotion illustrated
how media executives working under a public remit that requires them to cater to minority audiences produce these commodities only to ensure that a diversity tick box is checked. According to one theatre producer, “That’s why
[theatre venues] want you there, because the hope is you do ‘brown’ things
and you’ll bring ‘brown’ people and therefore everything will look rosy in our
venue.” According to this respondent, venues refuse to promote Asian cultural commodities to a wider audience because they do not deem them to have
mainstream appeal and, in turn, commercial value.
Those Asian cultural commodities that are deemed worthy of mainstream
exposure, however, often have their Asianness amplified. That is, the way in
which the commodity’s title, design/packaging or publicity material is aestheticized11 often reinforces neocolonial discourses of South Asian identity. As I
said above, the aestheticization of the Asian cultural commodity is based
upon on Orientalist binary opposition: exoticized and fetishized or reviled
10 Stuart Hall, “What Is This ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture?,” in Hall, Critical Dialogues
in Cultural Studies, 468.
11 Lash and Urry, Economies of Signs and Space.
44
Anamik Saha
and maligned. Book covers for Asian authors are notoriously exoticized. A
widely circulated internet meme from 2014 vividly illustrates how novels set
in South Asia are represented through just a handful of Indophilic12 and gendered tropes: “dupatta-wearing women, the Taj, close-ups of hennaed brown
feet, brides with nose rings, mangoes.”13 Similarly, publicity for the few Asian
cultural commodities that do make it onto primetime television is based upon
the same aesthetic; as a respondent who works in programme development at
the BBC explained, “If it’s got that colonial veneer it will get attention. It’s about
showing these stories through that prism.” In theatre, there was a feeling that
only Bollywood-style productions ever get attention from the (white) theatre
establishment. At the time of the research, the play Rafta Rafta, written by the
acclaimed British Pakistani playwright Ayub Khan-Din, was one of the few
productions about Asian culture that enjoyed a long run at a major venue, in
this case the Royal National Theatre. Yet, despite the positive response it received in the national press, many of my Asian respondents criticized it for reinforcing certain stereotypes about Asian families, complaining that it was
yet another play about arranged marriages. As one Asian playwright put it, “It
felt like a white guy being commissioned to research Indian people and come
up with a play. It felt so inauthentic, hammy, stereotypical.” Each of my respondents alluded in some way to the Orientalist dimension of what this playwright perceived as an excessively populist, vernacular aesthetic, which reduces South Asian cultures to the same fetishized signifiers in order to appeal
to the mainstream white audience and generate the biggest financial returns.
In light of these findings, it would be easy to think that making the cultural
industries more diverse would solve the problem of representation. Yet the
reproduction of racialized tropes is much more entrenched and complex than
can be fixed by making the industries more ethnically/racially mixed. For instance, if we return to book covers, the repetition of formulaic representations
of South Asian cultures can be explained by the dominance of a commercial
rationale that trumps the ethical or political or merely aesthetic motivations
of the symbol creator. Consider the following quote from an executive editor
working at a major publishing house:
So you go to a sales meeting with your new titles […] And the salesperson takes one
look at the cover and they say we can’t sell that […] that doesn’t stand out enough,
doesn’t tell me what it is. I want to know it’s a book about a young Sri Lankan woman…
(emphasis added).
12 Vijay Prashad, The Karma of Brown Folk (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2000).
13 Scroll Staff, “A Shy Woman by the Taj – or How Every South Asian Book Cover Looks the
Same,” Quartz, 14 May 2014, http://qz.com/209415/a-shy-woman-by-the-taj-or-how-everysouth-asian-book-cover-looks-the-same/.
45
This seems fairly innocuous on first reading — a straightforward narrative on
how a salesperson can veto the aesthetic choices of an editor. (Indeed, the increasing influence of sales and marketing personnel in editorial decisions was
something on which respondents in my research repeatedly remarked.) But it
also reveals how representations of Asianness are mediated through what Bill
Ryan14 calls the “rationalization” of cultural production in its corporate form.
In this example, the salesperson insists that the Asianness of the text be
foregrounded in order to make it stand out in the marketplace. I found that it
was precisely this sort of thinking that irritated Asian authors, who were aiming to tell universal stories but found that they were reduced to their own or,
as in this case, their characters’ ethnicities. As one Asian writer said to me,
“It’s about what you’re allowed to be.” Thus, I interpret the executive editor’s
remark as referring to the increasingly commercialized and rationalized cultures of production in the cultural industries that during the aestheticization
of the cultural commodity “format”15 it in a way that reproduces hegemonic
representations of race designed to appeal to white fantasies of the Other in
order to make a profit.
For another example of how cultures of production shape representations of
race, I want to draw from an interview with a Channel 4 executive — a Britishborn Pakistani Muslim with self-proclaimed working-class roots who had
taken up a leading role in the organization as its commissioning editor for religious and multicultural programming. The purpose of my interview was to
examine how he approaches the commissioning process with particular regard to television programmes that deal with multicultural issues. We see in
his account a clear view of how narratives of the British Asian, and, in particular, the Muslim, experience come to be presented in very specific ways. The
executive described his main aim as producing mainstream religious programming for broadcast during primetime. But, since these stories aren’t going to
get high ratings, he has to focus on generating “noise,” that is, press coverage:
From my point of view, basically we’re not going to get out and out huge ratings as
much as we can try, so we do definitely want the programme to be noticed. We want
it to get written about, we want it to win awards. We want it to have some noise, as
they say.
Thus, for this respondent, since programmes on religion do not generally attract the biggest audiences, the success of a programme depends on garnering
positive reviews in the national press and, possibly, awards. And we can see
how he attempts to do this through a quick scan of some of the programmes
14 Bill Ryan, Making Capital from Culture: The Corporate Form of Capitalist Production
(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1991).
15 Ibid., 164–184.
46
Anamik Saha
he has commissioned: Inside the Mind of a Suicide Bomber, The Cult of the
Suicide Bomber, Women Only Jihad, The Fundamentalist, Putting the “Fun” in
Fundamental.
I admit that this list is selective, and the executive has commissioned several other programmes on Islam that do not mention terrorism or fundamentalism. In addition, I should stress that I am not suggesting that these
programmes deal insensitively with their subjects or that they are no more
complex and nuanced than their titles suggest. In fact, one could argue that it
is important to tell these stories and promote a deeper understanding of what
is clearly a key issue of our time. But what makes me ambivalent about this
emphasis on “noise” is the invariable way that such programmes are aestheticized, a way that contributes to the sensationalized, Orientalist representation
of Islam. Regardless of how sensitively these subjects are explored, respondents felt that such programmes — and, in particular, their titles — constitute a
discourse that perpetuates a racist idea of Islam as abhorrent and absolutely,
irreconcilably different from and incompatible with Western society. As one
respondent put it:
Channel 4 in particular seems to be stuck in this mode of representing British Muslims — so much emphasis on the terrorism question, on fanaticism — that is what they
are interested in. And yes it is an important issue but it is by no means the most important issue in the whole […] I think if you were to look at Channel 4 […] a lot of the
documentary output related to Asian people, a lot of it is related to terrorism. Which
I think is very sad.
The main point that I am making is that the reproduction of neocolonial
discourses around race, ethnicity and religion does not merely spring from
the values of individual gatekeepers but is embedded within the production
process itself through what appears as a common-sense economic/commercial rationale. On a superficial level, there was nothing particularly controversial about the way that the Channel 4 executive described his strategy for
generating “noise.” But I argue that it is in how such a strategy is presented
as common-sense business practice that the richness, the diversity and the
complexity of the lives of minorities get reduced to racialized and Orientalist tropes.
Conclusion
The common perception amongst cultural/media policy-makers, activists
and campaigners is that the problem of the limited range of racialized ways in
which minorities are represented in the media can be laid squarely at the feet
47
of the privileged social class that dominates the upper echelons of the media
industries. While I think the need to make senior management more diverse
and inclusive is an urgent one, I have argued in this chapter that the urge to
reproduce racialized tropes in the media is so entrenched that diversity initiatives will have little effect. How else is one to explain the above case in which a
British Muslim media executive responsible for a range of programming on
Islam has been heavily criticized for being reductive and sensationalist? Just to
be clear, I do not claim that this individual should, as a Muslim, know better
or that he is, to use the tired cliché, a sell out. Rather, I wanted to demonstrate
how the channel’s emphasis on generating “noise” inevitably steered this executive’s work in a way that led him to produce what for many of my respondents were sensationalist representations of Islam, despite his efforts, perhaps,
to do something more nuanced.
But how can we combat these forces and engender meaningful change?
This is where I believe a “politics of production,” that is, a focus on the production process itself, can represent an intervention. I suggest two strategies
one designed to operate on the macro level and the other on the micro level of
cultural production.
The macro-level strategy consists in regulation that is more effective in two
ways. Firstly, public-service broadcasters need to be fully protected from market forces. They should not feel pressure, as they do in the UK, to compete with
commercial channels.16 Ratings should be a secondary concern that comes after a broadcaster has ensured its fulfilment of its public service remit to cater to the nation’s minorities. Moreover, the broadcaster should do this in a
way that consists in more than tick-boxing exercises. As Nicholas Garnham17
states, public service broadcasting is the “heartland of contemporary cultural
practice,” and it needs to be protected as such. Secondly, regulation must dilute concentrations of power in corporate media through reducing barriers to
entry. This would allow more voices to enter the market and, thus, ensure a
healthy, independent commercial sector that could provide the autonomy and
space that cultural producers need in order to take risks. A more robust public-service sector and more dynamic independent commercial sector would
clearly benefit minorities by lessening the hold of the forms of rationalization
in the corporate sector that restrict the creative and aesthetic, or even political, ambitions of producers from minority backgrounds.
On the micro level, cultural producers from racialized backgrounds —
whether filmmakers, journalists, authors, playwrights or screenwriters—need
16 Georgina Born, Uncertain Vision: Birt, Dyke and the Reinvention of the BBC (London:
Random House, 2011).
17 Nicholas Garnham, Capitalism and Communication: Global Culture and the Economics
of Information (London: SAGE Publications, 1990), 166.
48
Anamik Saha
to focus as much on their industry practice as they do on their craft. Though
media practitioners are constrained by the increasing commercialization of
the industry, there are still spaces where they can make their practice more
efficacious. After all, the media still produce some powerful critical insights
into the experiences of minorities. But sharpening practices depends on cultural producers being aware of how industrial processes of standardization
can undermine their political as well as artistic aims. So, for instance, they
should be as active as possible in every part of the production process, from
conception to marketing and distribution. Being prepared to challenge decisions or go against standard industry practice and choosing to work in environments that ensure relative autonomy are two aspects of this strategy.
This illustrates what I mean by a “politics of production”: a critical understanding of how media texts get produced and, more specifically, of the forces
that constrain the work of cultural producers and, so, their ability to tell the
stories that they want to tell. If we want less reductive and more varied representations of minorities, then we need to realize that that is going to take
much more than just diversifying the workforce. Producing more radical and
enlightening media representations of minorities depends upon transforming
media practices themselves.
Bibliography
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House, 2011.
Campion, Mukti J. Look Who’s Talking: Cultural Diversity, Public Service Broadcasting and the
National Conversation. Oxford: Nuffield College, 2005.
Conlan, Tara. “Lenny Henry Campaign: Back TV Diversity or We’ll Boycott Licence Fee.” The
Guardian, 23 April 2014. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/apr/23/lenny-henrycampaign-tv-diversity-licence-fee.
Dwyer, Claire and Philip Crang. “Fashioning Ethnicities: The Commercial Spaces of Multiculture.” Ethnicities 2, no. 3 (2002): 410–430.
Garnham, Nicholas. Capitalism and Communication: Global Culture and the Economics of Information. London: SAGE Publications, 1990.
Hall, Stuart. “New Ethnicities.” In id. Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies. Edited by David
Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen, 441–49. London: Routledge, 1996.
Hall, Stuart. “What Is This ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture?” In id. Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies. Edited by David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen, 468–478. London: Routledge, 1996.
Hill, Amelia. “Dyke: BBC Is Hideously White.” The Guardian, 7 January 2001. http://www.
theguardian.com/media/2001/jan/07/uknews.theobserver1.
Lash, Scott M. and John Urry. Economies of Signs and Space. London: SAGE Publications, 1993.
Malik, Sarita. “‘Keeping It Real’: The Politics of Channel 4’s Multiculturalism, Mainstreaming and Mandates.” Screen 49, no. 3 (2008): 343–353, http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/
content/49/3/343.full.pdf+html.
49
Modood, Tariq. Not Easy Being British: Colour, Culture and Citizenship. London: Runnymede
Trust and Trentham Books, 1992. http://www.opengrey.eu/item/display/10068/475135.
O’Loughlin, Ben. “The Operationalization of the Concept ‘Cultural Diversity’ in British Television Policy and Governance.” Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change, Working Paper no. 27 (November 2006). http://www.cresc.ac.uk/medialibrary/workingpapers/
wp27.pdf.
Prashad, Vijay. The Karma of Brown Folk. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
Ryan, Bill. Making Capital from Culture: The Corporate Form of Capitalist Production. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1991.
Saha, Anamik. “‘Beards, Scarves, Halal Meat, Terrorists, Forced Marriage’: Television Industries and the Production of ‘Race’.” Media, Culture & Society 34, no. 4 (2012): 424–438.
Staff, Scroll. “A Shy Woman by the Taj — or How Every South Asian Book Cover Looks
the Same.” Quartz, 14 May 2014. http://qz.com/209415/a-shy-woman-by-the-taj-or-howevery-south-asian-book-cover-looks-the-same/.
Abstract
Mit diesem Beitrag möchte ich zeigen, wie mediale Repräsentationen von rassifizierten Minderheiten durch die Produktionsbedingungen in der Kulturwirtschaft geprägt sind. Medienwissenschaftler*innen haben sich eingehend
mit dem Fortdauern von stereotypen Bildern verschiedener Ethnien in den
Medien und der Populärkultur beschäftigt. Doch gibt es bislang sehr wenig
empirische Forschung dazu, wie die Kulturwirtschaft arbeitet, die diese verkürzten Darstellungen produziert. Ziel dieses Beitrags ist es, auf der Grundlage einer ethnografischen Studie über die britisch-südasiatische Kulturproduktion im Fernsehen, im Verlagswesen und im Theater zu zeigen, wie selbst
Minderheitenangehörige – entgegen ihren guten Absichten – dazu gebracht
werden, problematische Selbstbilder zu produzieren. In diesem Beitrag werden zwei Thesen aufgestellt: 1) Die zunehmende Diversität des Personals
in den Kultureinrichtungen wird nicht zwangsläufig die Darstellung von
»Rasse« in den Medien verbessern, und 2) ob Strategien der Präsentation
wirksam sind, hängt von einer »Politik der Produktion« ab, die den Fokus darauf legt, die Produktionsbedingungen zu verändern, innerhalb derer Darstellungen von Minderheiten entstehen.
Dr. Anamik Saha is a lecturer in the Department of Media and Communications at
Goldsmiths, University of London. Prior to this he worked in the Institute of Communications Studies at the University of Leeds. He has also held visiting fellowships
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and at Trinity College, Connecticut.
Anamik’s work has been published in journals such as Media, Culture and Society,
Ethnic and Racial Studies, Ethnicities, and the European Journal of Cultural Studies. He
recently edited a special issue of Popular Communication with David Hesmondhalgh
on “race,” ethnicity, and cultural production. He is currently working on a book on
“race” and the cultural industries.
Sally Lehrman
Creating an Inclusive Public Commons
Values and Structures in Journalism
that Can Promote Change
My great-grandfather immigrated to New York City from Russia in the early
1900s. Soon after his arrival, he had to depart with his wife and children to
Denver, Colorado, to seek admittance to a sanatorium. He had contracted tuberculosis, and, back then, high-altitude, fresh air and sunshine were thought
to cure the deadly disease. People like my great-grandfather were tucked into
open-air beds on long porches of hospitals, where they remained in sunshine
or snow. And, as one doctor told me recently, the treatment might very well
cure you — if it didn’t kill you.
There was a debate going on in the United States at the time. Were Jews,
like my great-grandfather, members of a separate race? And were they more
susceptible to tuberculosis? Why did so many African Americans die from it?
Scientists and doctors wrote about these matters. Both Jews and black people,
they proposed, had “small chests” and “weak lungs.”1 But other experts, especially Jewish physicians and philosophers, argued that this vulnerability was
not innate. Rather, it could be traced to the social conditions in which these
two groups found themselves. Immigrant Jews often lived in tenement houses
and worked in sweatshops, places where the disease spread easily. African
Americans also suffered from poor housing, low wages, and poverty.2 The social vulnerability theory, of course, turned out to be right.
My great-grandfather’s story offers an example of the assumptions and
ideologies that shaped ways of seeing and thinking about the day’s issues at
the turn of the 20th century. It illustrates our tendency, even today, to blame
societal problems on group or individual characteristics instead of looking
at society itself. Now, as then, it is difficult to recognize and respond to com1 William Zebina Ripley, The Races of Europe: A Sociological Study (New York: D. Appleton
and Co., 1899), 382; Seale Harris, “Tuberculosis in the Negro,” JAMA 41 (1903): 834–838.
Harris argues that the high rate of TB in “Negroes” is due to both innate weaknesses and
social conditions. Sanford B. Hunt, “The Negro as a Soldier,” Anthropological Review 7
(1869): 40–54.
2 John D. Hunter, “Tuberculosis in the Negro: Causes and Treatment,” Colorado Medical
Journal 11 (1905): 250–257.
51
monly held assumptions about which differences among people matter; why
they matter; and, as a result, what should be done to address inequities in
health, education, criminal justice, and other areas. Journalism, of course,
plays an important role in providing a forum for exchange of ideas and debate about such critical concerns. Today, Jews are no longer the main focus of
debates about health voiced either in medical circles or the news media. But
immigrants still are. The headlines on American cable news and local television over the past year have included:
“Ebola Fears Spark Backlash Against Latino Immigrants” — CNN;3
“Undocumented Immigrants Bringing Diseases Across Border?”—ABC15 (Arizona);4
“Immigration Crisis: Tuberculosis Spreading at (Immigrant) Camps” — Fox News;
and
“Border Patrol Union Claims Scabies ‘Outbreak’ Threatens Agents, Public” — Fox
News.5
These examples remind journalists, media scholars, and citizens alike that
it is our challenge to alert ourselves to repetition of commonly held but unfounded assumptions. More importantly, we must recognize the ways in
which these assumptions limit journalists’ own understanding of the areas
they cover, and, in turn, that of the audiences they serve.
This article considers belief systems and structures in the news that have
created problems of accuracy and fair representation and some strategies to
change them. I write from the perspective of a journalist who covers scientific
and social issues, one who has long been involved in the effort to make news
coverage more inclusive.
3 Maria Santana, “Ebola Fears Spark Backlash Against Latino Immigrants,” CNN Politics,
12 October 2014, http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/10/politics/ebola-fears-spark-backlashlatinos/.
4 Navideh Forghani, “Undocumented Immigrants Bringing Diseases Across Border?” ABC15,
9 June 2014, http://www.abc15.com/news/national/immigrants-bringing-diseases-acrossborder.
5 Todd Starnes, “Immigration Crisis: Tuberculosis Spreading at Camps,” Fox News, 7 July 2014,
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/07/07/immigration-crisis-tuberculosis-spreadingat-camps.html; Judson Berger, “Border Patrol Union Claims Scabies ‘Outbreak’ Threatens Agents, Public,” Fox News, 7 July 2014, http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/07/07/
border-patrol-union-claims-scabies-outbreak-threatens-agents-public/.
52
Sally Lehrman
Media Production
Since as far back as the 1940s, American journalism generally has recognized
the need to cover all the various groups in American society.6 This important
principle was articulated by the Commission on Freedom of the Press, a panel
created at the instigation of Henry R. Luce, co-founder and editor-in-chief of
Time magazine, who also helped fund it with a $200,000 grant from Time Inc.
Luce wanted to protect the press’s independence by setting standards for its
social responsibility. So he asked his former Yale classmate Robert Hutchins,
chancellor of the University of Chicago, to form and lead a commission to investigate the issue. The commission, which included four foreign advisers,
pondered the matter for four years, hearing testimony from 58 journalists and
interviewing 225 members of industry, government, and agencies associated
with the press. Its 13 members concluded that the news should be:
– truthful, comprehensive, intelligent, and placed in a context which gives it
meaning;
– a forum for the exchange of comments and criticism;
– representative of all of the groups that constitute society;
– a forum for the presentation and clarification of society’s goals and values;
and
– widely distributed.
In truth, unfortunately, these clear principles had only a modest influence on
practice. The mid-1960s, a traumatic period in the racial history of the U. S.,
made this apparent. Across several summers, urban black communities in
Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, and other cities arose in anger. Tension over
police practices, inadequate housing, and the lack of meaningful employment
burst into violence. In 1967, President Lyndon Johnson appointed what is now
known as the Kerner Commission to investigate the causes of the unrest. The
commission studied incidents in 23 cities and in its report highlighted the
segregation and discrimination permeating American society.7 In describing
the forces and institutions responsible for the country’s deepening racial divisions, the commission pointed a finger directly at the news media. On the
whole, the commission concluded, most of the coverage of the unrest had attempted to be fair and accurate. But overall, journalism had failed American
society. More specifically, the news had:
6 Commission on Freedom of the Press, A Free and Responsible Press: A General Report
on Mass Communication: Newspapers, Radio, Motion Pictures, Magazines, and Books
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947), 20–29.
7 U. S. National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, Report of the National Advisory
Commission on Civil Disorders (Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1968).
53
– created an exaggerated sense of the scope and intensity of the unrest;
– helped cause it by denying black Americans a voice in the news; and
– failed to give two of the major groups in society — black people and white
people — a clear picture of one another, each other’s life experiences, and
each other’s needs.
Disastrously, the commissioners said, “the media report and write from the
standpoint of a white man’s world.”
Last year, we saw uprisings in Ferguson, Missouri; Baltimore, Maryland;
and throughout the U. S. in protest of the police’s use of force — and what activists describe as the unaddressed historical degradation of the value of
black lives. Reporters once again have to ask ourselves whether we are failing
society. Have journalists recognized that #BlackLivesMatter?
News organizations did take steps to change after the Kerner Report. One
major effort was to create more diverse newsrooms. In 1978, for example, the
American Society of Newspaper Editors developed a system of accountability by conducting an annual census of staffing by race. Later, it added gender. Members also shared best practices in hiring and retention. Over nearly
50 years, newsrooms have changed. But they remain nowhere near representative of the population in the U. S., of which racial minorities constitute
about 37 percent.8 The newsrooms that report to ASNE remain stuck at about
13 percent non-white.9
And, now, we find new barriers to such efforts. Shrinking newsrooms attempt to address a 24/7 news cycle. Traditional news organizations are struggling to survive in the online and mobile environment, in which advertisement commands much lower rates. Audiences less readily distinguish
expensive, original news reporting from derivative work. Experimentation
and innovation are rising, but most of these efforts do not give priority to diversity — or even recognize the need for it. Digital startups are quite white,
quite male.
Why? Despite evidence that diverse groups perform and make decisions
better,10 news media in crisis rely on familiar faces. Newsroom staff in the
U. S. declined in diversity in the most recent American Society of Newspaper
8 United States Census Bureau, 2010 Census, accessed 6 August 2015, http://www.census.
gov/2010census/.
9 American Society of Newspaper Editors, 2015 Census, accessed 17 August 2015, asne.
org/content.asp?pl=121&sl=415&contentid=415.
10 Lu Hong and Scott E. Page, “Groups of Diverse Problem Solvers can Outperform Groups
of High-Ability Problem Solvers,” PNAS 101, no. 46 (2004): 16,385–16,389; Karen A. Jehn,
Gregory B. Northcraft, and Margaret A. Neale, “Why Differences Make a Difference:
A Field Study of Diversity, Conflict and Performance in Workgroups,” Administrative
Science Quarterly 44, no. 4 (1999): 741–763.
54
Sally Lehrman
Editors Census. A full 90 percent of supervisors were white.11 Women lead
only two of the 25 highest-circulating American newspapers.12 Most of those
in charge of the top 25 digital news sites in the U. S. are white men.13 About
one-half to two-thirds of the workers employed by the largest American digital media companies — Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In — are
white, with Asians making up the bulk of the rest.14 So greatly outnumbered,
non-white, non-male voices have little influence.
Representation of Minorities: News Content
As for news content, diversity advocates have pushed for more inclusive
coverage and for newsroom training in cross-cultural reporting. For example,
the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education in Oakland, California, has
offered such workshops for journalists since 1977. The Poynter Institute for
Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Florida, provides diversity training for journalists and educators. Such education has had a limited effect and, sometimes,
unintended consequences, e.g.:
– the “zoo” story, covering colorful festivals, supposedly surprising cultural
habits, and so on; and
– the “plight” or “problem people” story, which emphasizes trauma and
misfortune.15
– Neither are wrong, but if they dominate cross-cultural reporting, they can
worsen stereotypes.
An effective way to understand the portrayal of ethnic groups and the impact
of these portrayals is through recognizing the “frame” at work in the background. A frame is the organizing principle a journalist uses in constructing a news story to show what’s important, why it matters, who is responsible,
and what should be done. Communication researchers have used the concept
11 American Society of Newspaper Editors, 2015 Census, Tables A and C, accessed 27 August
2015, http://www.asne.org/content.asp?pl=140&sl=129&contentid=129.
12 Joe Strupp, “With Jill Abramson’s NY Times Ouster, none of the Ten Largest Papers are
Led by Women,” Media Matters for America, 16 May 2014, http://mediamatters.org/
blog/2014/05/16/with-jill-abramsons-ny-times-ouster-none-of-the/199349.
13 Assessed from Pew Research Center News Media Indicator Database, http://www.
journalism.org/media-indicators/digital-top-50-online-news-entities list.
14 Elizabeth Weise and Jessica Guynn, “White, Asian Men Rule the Roost at Twitter,” USA
Today, 24 July 2014, http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/07/23/twitter-diversityhiring/13060901/.
15 Clint C. Wilson II, Felix Gutierrez, and Lena M. Chao, Racism, Sexism and the Media:
Multicultural Issues into the New Communications (Los Angeles: Sage, 2013), 40, 187.
55
to examine how news content is shaped, produces meaning, and influences
audience perceptions. One study of two years of coverage of Native Americans
in the Boston Globe16 found several recurring types of content frames that emphasized this group’s perceived status as:
– generic outsider: described in counterpoint to the white American mainstream, and not as part of it;
– degraded Indian: shown as having adopted bad Anglo-European habits but
not positive Anglo-European values; and
– historic relic: portrayed as a remnant of history and a people who are no
longer relevant.
This author’s informal survey of news and feature headlines in the New York
Times that contain the terms “Native American” or “American Indian”17 supported the research findings from the Boston Globe study, e.g.:
“Native Americans Struggle with High Rate of Rape”
“The Sale of Manhattan, Retold from a Native American Viewpoint”
“As American Indians Move to Cities, Old and New Challenges”
“‘Nation to Nation,’ at Museum of the American Indian”
“Appeals Court Rejects Claims by American Indian Payday Lenders”
One of these was an opinion piece about an incident that occurred 150 years
ago, in 1864!
Other groups experience a similar disjunction between their lives and the
news about them. As one recent study of news habits and attitudes in the U. S.
found, African Americans and Hispanics (both native and immigrant) express dismay about the portrayal of their lives and communities.18
So what are some solutions? Consider the “voiced participant” content
frame, which the researchers studying the Boston Globe described as newly
emerging and distinct from the “outsider,” “degraded,” and “historic” American Indian frames noted above.19 In this type of frame, members of minority
16 Autumn Miller and Susan Dente Ross, “They Are Not Us: Framing of American Indians
by the Boston Globe,” Howard Journal of Communications 15, no. 4 (2004): 245–259.
17 Williams, Timothy, 22 May 2012; Barron, James, 18 November 2014; Eddy, Melissa,
17 August 2014; Williams, Timothy, 13 April 2013; Rothstein, Edward, 21 October 2014;
Silver-Greenberg, Jessica, 1 October 2014.
18 Media Insight Project, “The Personal News Cycle: African American and Hispanic News
Consumers,” 16 September 2014, accessed 27 July 2015, http://www.americanpressinstitute.
org/publications/reports/survey-research/african-american-hispanic-news-consumers/.
19 Miller and Ross, “They Are Not Us,” 251.
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groups speak for themselves and maintain their own identities within the
mainstream culture. Some practices that can help to increase the number of
stories thusly framed are:
1) fellowships aimed at creating more diverse news staffs;20
2) user-generated content that brings in non-majority views;21
3) exchange and collaboration with associations of minority journalists, such
as the Native American Journalists Association and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists;
4) collaboration with ethnic media;22 and
5) source databases and better use of female and minority sources.23
Media Perceptions: Addressing Social Structures
In addition to the above approaches, a colleague at San Francisco State University, Venise Wagner, and I believe that deeper change is needed. We are developing ways to teach journalists to think in new ways that can be the basis
for more effective reporting and writing. We call this effort the Opportunity
Project.
When one examines news frames, one can consider not just what matters
in a story and why it does but also the choices a journalist makes in telling
the story. Traditional journalistic practices in the U. S. tend to use one individual’s experience to stand in for a group or a single concrete instance to illustrate a societal trend. The Stanford University political scientist and communication scholar Shanto Iyengar calls this the “anecdotal” or “episodic”
frame.24 But this practice can cause misunderstandings. It can inadvertently
play to news consumers’ stereotypes and biases and lead the audience to
20 Politico, for instance, began a training institute with the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, which specializes in diversity, and hired a recent graduate in a one-year
fellowship. The Center for Public Integrity began a fellowship for postgraduate journalists of color in 2014.
21 The Washington Post’s “PostEverything” blog brings in multiple perspectives and viewpoints not regularly seen in the newspaper.
22 In the U. S., such associations include the National Association of Black Journalists, the
Asian American Journalists Association, the Native American Journalists Association,
the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, and New America Media, a consortium of ethnic media.
23 For an example, see the Society of Professional Journalists’ Rainbow Sourcebook at
http://www.spj.org/divsourcebook.asp.
24 Iyengar sets forth this theory of episodic or “anecdotal” framing, as opposed to “thematic”
framing, in Shanto Iyengar, Is Anyone Responsible? How Television Frames Political Issues
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
57
overlook the very social conditions and outcomes that a journalist intends
to highlight.
Research in experimental psychology has found that journalism that relies on the anecdotal frame may increase the audience’s feeling that a non-majority individual is the “other.”25 The news story focuses one’s attention on an
individual’s behavior and choices. This in turn may prompt an audience to
blame the victim, if you will, or attribute inequities in health, for instance, to
cultural practices or group behaviors of the less healthy instead of holding the
society at large accountable.
News stories on health inequities often feature individuals who have become health advocates. For example, an article in the Savannah Morning
News described an African-American woman who having survived breast
cancer had begun promoting mammograms for women in her community.26
On the whole, the story was fine. But, by emphasizing this individual’s experience, the writer suggested that fear and financial worries prevent black women
from getting tested and that, as a result, we see a higher death rate among African-American women with the disease. Like many other such articles, it also
pointed to contested evidence that supposedly links certain types of African
ancestry to an especially aggressive type of breast cancer. However, the article
didn’t mention what may be an equally important, perhaps even more important, factor in the increased death rate that has nothing to do with an individual’s decision making or ancestry. There is convincing evidence that African-American women receive lower quality health care over their lifetimes.27
Another article, on a website called Healthy Hispanic Living, is like many
that aim to empower Latinas to take steps to lower their risk of breast cancer.
In the course of recommending screenings and self-exams, the site’s content
speculates that there is something biologically distinct about this very diverse
group, whose members come from Spain, Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean, that leads to high susceptibility. In fact, there is no scientific agreement on this hypothesis.28
Such reporting turns society’s attention to individual or supposed group
characteristics that cannot be changed and, thus, away from solutions that can
25 Mahzarin Banaji, personal communication, 2006.
26 Dana Clark Felty, “Black Women & Breast Cancer: Lower Risk, Greater Danger,” Savannah
Morning News, 30 March 2010, http://savannahnow.com/accent/2010-03-30/black-womenbreast-cancer-lower-risk-greater-danger.
27 Jeffrey H. Silber et al., “Characteristics associated with differences in survival among
black and white women with breast cancer,” JAMA 310, no. 4 (2013): 389–397, doi:10.1001/
jama.2013.8272.
28 Laura Fejerman et al., “Genome-Wide Association Study of Breast Cancer in Latinas
Identifies Novel Protective Variants on 6q25,” Nature Communications 5 (2014): 1–8,
doi:10.1038/ncomms6260.
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Economic & Social
Opportunities and Ressources
Living and Working
Conditions
Biology
Access
Personal
and Cultural
Behaviour
Health, Education, Other Outcomes
Fig. 1: [Adapted from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation]
be enacted by a better allocation of resources and setting of priorities within
the broader community. This is one reason Venise Wagner and I work to encourage journalists to rely less on and reach farther than the anecdotal frame.
We have developed a reporting strategy, which is outlined below, that we are
promoting to journalism educators and newsrooms through training sessions, talks, and a forthcoming textbook, Reporting Inequality, under contract
with Routledge.
Stories about individuals and specific events do capture an audience’s attention. We advise that reporters retain the anecdotal frame but extend their
research and interviews so as to probe the social and institutional structures
that shape an individual’s decision making and behavior. In effect, we believe
that the anecdotal can be combined with the societal “thematic” frame. Certainly, individuals often do make bad decisions. We as a society, however, can
learn more from the factors that influence these decisions. With the shift in
reporting practices that we advocate, journalists can bring these to light.
The framework that we use, which we have borrowed from the public health
model of the social determinants of health,29 is shown above (Fig. 1). It moves
from individual behavior and the biology of health outward to the working
and living conditions that shape both. It also illustrates that social and economic opportunities and resources shape these working and living conditions. A journalist pursuing a story can consider how political and historical
29 http://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/socialdeterminants/index.html.
59
Power Relations:
Social Hierarchies &
Privileges
– Class
– Gender
– Immigration status
– National origin
– Sexual orientation
– Disability
– Age
– Geography
Institutional
Power
– Corporations
– Other businesses
– Government
agencies
– Schools
Neighborhood &
Social Conditions
– Neighborhood
conditions
– Social
– Physical
– Residential
segregation
– Workplace
conditions
Fig. 2: [Adapted from the Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative, 2008]
hierarchies of race and ethnicity are embedded in social and economic structures that, in turn, constrain working and living conditions, which in constrain
behavior and biology.
This graphic (Fig. 1) can be used as a tool for developing fresh ideas and
new story frames for covering inequity. A reporter can use it to ask what factors other than behavior, biology, and access shape unequal outcomes (represented by the lowest bar) by ethnic group in any area of coverage: health, education, criminal justice, government services, and so on. Pursuing answers to
the question “why?” takes a reporter up the hierarchy of influences, out of the
area of the innermost circle to the bands that constrain it, namely “Living and
Working Conditions” and “Economical and Social Opportunities.” Stories
about high levels of diabetes in American Indians or African Americans, for
instance, often emphasize the need for group members to exercise more often.
Instead, a reporter can ask why exercise is lacking. Why do people avoid walking in their neighborhood, for instance? If it’s dangerous, why is it dangerous?
This brings the news piece into the band “Living and Working Conditions.”
What living and working conditions might make walking unpleasant, frightening, difficult, or dangerous? And what economic, business, or government
policies shape these neighborhood or working conditions? The practice of organizing questions in such a way helps journalists construct news frames and
provide information that society can act upon.
The graphic above (Fig. 2) shows the same influences on social inequality in
the form of a flow chart. It illustrates the way in which power relations shape
institutional decision making, which in turn shapes neighborhood and broader
social conditions. An individual article on Latina or African-American health,
for example, might describe ways in which people within a particular neighborhood are attempting to change school or local government policies in order
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to be provided with more opportunities for safer recreation or healthier food.
Or, a video might discuss workplace policies that influence an employee’s ability to stop work and eat a nutritious lunch each day or provide the scheduling
consistency that allows for planning and cooking family meals.
Implicit Bias
In addition, we use social science research and its findings to help journalists understand another type of frame, namely, our own mental frames. Social scientists use “mental frame” to refer to the way one thinks about an idea
or issue.30 Our life experiences, combined with our internalization of the beliefs, values, and stereotypes of the society we live in, create these mental
frames. Like everyone, journalists apply these frames to their work. A journalist’s mental frames influence her editorial decisions about what event, action, or individual is important and why it matters. They underpin her everyday choices in reporting, writing, and producing news content, especially the
snap judgments that she makes under pressure.
Mental frames also underpin the social fabric into which news content
is folded. Individuals’ mental frames interact with the myths, attitudes, behaviors, and history of the broader society, especially those of dominant
groups.31 These widely shared societal mental frames shape the ways in which
an audience interprets and understands the news.32 Research on implicit bias
helps us better understand the effects of societal frames and what to do about
them. Tony Greenwald (University of Washington), Mahzarin Banaji (Harvard
University), and Brian Nosek (University of Virginia) conducted the original,
groundbreaking work on implicit bias, which describes those understandings outside of our awareness that influence our perception and behavior.33
30 For a good example, see Karmen Erjavec et al., “Journalistic Views on Post-Violent Peacebuilding in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” in Olivera Simic et al. (eds.), Peace Psychology
in the Balkans: Dealing with a Violent Past While Building Peace (New York: Springer,
2012), 1–14.
31 Miller and Ross, “They Are Not Us,” 247.
32 For example, see David J. Knight, “Don’t Tell Young Black Males that They Are ‘Endangered’,” The Washington Post, 10 October 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/
opinions/young-black-males-trapped-by-rhetoric/2014/10/10/dcf95688-31e2-11e4-9e920899b306bbea_story.html.
33 Brian A. Nosek et al., “Harvesting Implicit Group Attitudes and Beliefs from a Demonstration Website,” Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice 6, no. 1 (2002): 101–115.
See also Brian A. Nosek et al., “Pervasiveness and Correlates of Implicit Attitudes and
Stereotypes,” European Review of Social Psychology 18 (2007): 36–88.
61
They developed the Implicit Association Test,34 a computer-based tool that
assesses an individual’s reactions to words and images, to study this process.
The test measures how quickly we associate faces, names, or other indicators
of group membership with positive or negative attitudes or with particular
characteristics.
Do we more quickly connect women’s faces with words relevant to the humanities or to the social sciences? When we see a black-skinned man holding an object, do we more quickly assume that it is a soft drink, a phone, or a
gun? Do the attitudes we think we have toward Hinduism, Islam, Judaism,
and Christianity match our automatic reactions when we see symbols of these
religions paired with positive or negative words? This research closely examines what we assume about others and the world around us: what we focus
on, what we see, and what we imagine. Project Implicit35 is a multi-university
collaboration that grew out of this work and draws researchers from around
the world. In some of the tests conducted with German subjects, participants
more quickly associated women with family and men with careers. They
more easily connected positive words with heterosexuals and were more likely
to show an automatic preference for thin people compared to heavier ones.
These are similar to results with subjects in the U. S.
Why does this work matter to journalists? These processes operate below
the level of our awareness all the time. They shape our reporting. And they
shape the way audiences receive our reporting.36 Researchers who study implicit bias have found that the mental frames that shape our world can influence visual perception. Journalists often pride themselves on relying on their
own senses to report a story. As one reporter told me in a workshop, “I write
what I see.” Venise Wagner and I are teaching journalists that their own implicit biases can render some things invisible to them, and perhaps even worse,
they may see things that literally are not present. Furthermore, when we judge
someone to be outside of one or another of our own social categories, we are
less likely to remember her face, praise her acts, and anticipate positive behavior from her.37 Like the study subjects who found it easier to be sure that a
white-skinned person was unarmed than that a black-skinned person was,
we are more likely to perceive the world around us in accord with societal
34 Project Implicit, accessed 6 August 2015, http://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit.
35 Project Implicit, “Implicit Social Cognition: Investigating the Gap Between Intentions
and Actions,” accessed 6 August 2015, http://www.projectimplicit.net/index.html.
36 Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz and Michelle Ortiz, “Race, Ethnicity and the Media,” in The
Oxford Handbook of Media Psychology, ed. Karen E. Dill (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2013).
37 Sam Sommers, Situations Matter: Understanding How Context Transforms Your World
(New York: Riverhead Books, 2011), 223–251.
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stereotypes.38 Journalists, too, might miss the science book in a Muslim’s
hand; we might think we see a weapon that isn’t present. As human beings,
we categorize the world and make assumptions that follow. These categories
guide our perception, thinking, and behavior without our awareness.
Venise Wagner and I have turned again to social scientists to learn ways to
respond. We tell journalists:
– Become aware. Take a few of the Implicit Association tests yourself and
consider the automatic preferences that may shape what you seem to see
and how you interpret it. You can use this awareness to reshape your perceptions. The experimental psychologist Patricia Devine suggests some
antidotes to the mental errors that implicit bias can cause. For instance,
consider stereotypes about a particular group; then think of cases that
don’t fit them. Practice taking on the perspective of a stigmatized group.
Study a public figure in a community you know little about, or spend time
in religious or community centers different from your own.39
– Gaze into your identity bubble. Learn about the mental frames you bring to
your work. One tool for doing this, called the “diversity wheel,” illustrates
the various dimensions of identity that shape how we interpret the world
around us and how others see us in turn. The more visible, usually permanent, aspects include gender, national origin, age, and mental or physical
ability. Less obvious, more transient aspects of identity include education,
family situation, work experience, and income. Trainers who work with organizations to enhance the diversity of their workplaces40 use the diversity
wheel to help people recognize their differences and appreciate what they
can learn from others. Which aspects of your own experience, upbringing,
and culture shape the way you see the social world?
– Intentionally challenge your mental frames. Try making explicit the assumptions that grow out of your culture and upbringing. What is your
mental image of an entrepreneur, an engineer, or a basketball player?
Does it match the data on people who fill these roles successfully? The
possibilities?
38 Joshua Correll, Bernadette Park, Charles M. Judd, and Bernd Wittenbrink, “The Police
Officer’s Dilemma: Using Ethnicity to Disambiguate Potentially Threatening Individuals,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83, no. 6 (2002): 1314–1329.
39 Patricia G. Devine, Patrick S. Forscher, Anthony J. Austin and William T. L. Cox, “LongTerm Reduction in Implicit Race Bias: A Prejudice Habit-Breaking Intervention,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48, no. 6 (2012): 1267–1278. Also Devine personal
communication, August 2012.
40 Marilyn Loden and Judy B. Rosener, Workforce America!: Managing Employee Diversity
as a Vital Resource (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991). For one example, see John Hopkins
Diversity Leadership Council, Diversity Wheel, accessed 6 August 2015, web.jhu.edu/
dlc/resources/diversity_wheel.
63
– Look for counter-examples, and learn about them. Pay attention to immigrant scientists, technologists, or entrepreneurs, say, or check out the community-service activities of a Muslim student association in your area.
– Catch yourself when you gravitate toward the familiar. Resist the temptation
to avoid the uncomfortable.
Trust
Finally, now that most news is delivered on the Internet or through social media, can journalists cut through the chaos? The digital environment delivers
multiple types of information, some truthful, some false, some propaganda.
Most journalism is responsible, attempts to be inclusive, and is carefully reported. But some presentations that look like journalism are sales pitches,
and some of these deliberately distort the facts to incite fear and hate. How
can we assure audiences that our reporting is careful, unbiased, comprehensive, and designed to support people’s ability to govern themselves? In other
words, what must we do to convince today’s digital audience that our work
gives them information they can act upon? Journalists are beginning to think
more deeply about the need to earn both audience and source trust. It is a
rarely mentioned truth that accurate reporting requires sources that are both
trustworthy and that trust the journalist. Furthermore, without the trust of
the audience, we cannot expand its willingness to hear alternative voices expressing perspectives outside of the familiar. How can we disrupt our audience’s group and societal frames?
Another effort I’m involved in, the Trust Project,41 addresses journalism’s
need to earn trust. It’s a collaborative effort housed at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, whose participants include
Google News and editors of major news organizations across the United
States, Canada, and Europe. The project hopes to reconnect journalism to its
basic principles of inclusive, ethical reporting — reporting that represents all
of society’s constituent groups, helps it clarify its goals and values, and provides actionable information to all of its members.
In recent years, it has become common for editors to complain that the
digital environment undermines traditional journalistic ethics and even that
those standards simply do not matter in online space. We propose to address
41 http://www.thetrustproject.org. See also @journethics at https://twitter.com/journ
ethics and www.scu.edu/ethics-center/digital-journalism-ethics/2014-roundtable.cfm.
Funders include the Craig Newmark Philanthropic Fund, Google, and the Markkula
Foundation.
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this complaint by using technology and the digital environment to support
the highest journalistic principles. Can we use digital tools to differentiate
high-quality, original reporting, to indicate expert work in ways such as the
following?
1) Author biographies: What is the expertise of this reporter? Does she or he
have a conflict of interest?
2) Methodology: How many editors, if any, reviewed a story?
3) Web of information: Can we help audiences see when one news report is
built upon other reliable reports or data, when it is an outlier, or when it
may be fake?
4) Collaboration: Can we share data and reporting? ProPublica,42 for example,
opens its investigative databases to other outlets, such as Univision. And
Univision43 is collaborating with a local news station in San Francisco.44
5) Transparency: Can we show our ethics and diversity policies on news sites
and create better methods to be accountable to them? For example, theGerman press code addresses religious and racial discrimination. That’s
worth highlighting.45
Journalists have an important role to play in bringing together all of society’s
groups, informing them about one another, and helping them to identify and
shape shared values. By addressing those of our personal values and practices
that unintentionally create bias and by building trust with our audiences, we
can do this well. We can rid ourselves of the assumptions embedded in our
minds and in our cultures that undermine a peaceful, inclusive society.
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67
Abstract
Dieser Essay untersucht Strukturen und Lehrmeinungen in den U. S.-amerikanischen Medien, durch die Probleme bei der Darstellung ethnischer und
religiöser Minderheiten in den letzten Jahren verschärft wurden, obwohl die
Presse seit den 1940er-Jahren verspricht und sich bemüht, inklusiver, sorgfältiger und ausgewogener zu berichten. Der Beitrag wendet Erkenntnisse
aus der Sozialpsychologie und das Konzept der Nachrichten-Frames an, um
Folgendes vorzuschlagen: neue Ansätze für die Gewichtung und den Aufbau
von Inhalten; neue Möglichkeiten, von einem strukturellen Standpunkt aus
über Ungerechtigkeiten in der Gesellschaft zu berichten; eine Untersuchung
der Prämissen, die Eingang in die Berichterstattung finden; die Notwendigkeit, das Vertrauen sowohl der Informanten als auch der Leser*innen bzw.
Zuschauer*innen zu gewinnen.
Prof. Dr. Sally Lehrman is an award-winning reporter on medicine and science policy,
with an emphasis on coverage of social diversity. She is a Senior Fellow for Journalism
Ethics at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and Science
and Justice Professor at the UC-Santa Cruz Center for Science and Justice. Her book
on emerging solutions to health disparities, Skin Deep: The Search for Race in Our
Genes, is to be published by Oxford University Press. Lehrman’s byline credits include
Scientific American, Nature, Health, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, Salon.
com, and The DNA Files, distributed by NPR . Her book, “News in a New America,”
argues for an inclusive U. S. news media. Her honors include a Peabody Award and
the John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford University. Latest publication: New Genetic
Insights Show How Tuberculosis May Be Evolving to Become More Dangerous, in:
Scientific American Magazine, Volume 309, Issue 1, 2013.
Christel Gärtner
Religion and the Opinion Makers
Views of Religion among Elite Journalists in Germany
1.
Introduction
Since the 1990s, religious themes have been attracting increasing attention
in Germany. The strong media presence of religion is the outcome of, on
the one hand, its role in various political upheavals1 and, on the other hand,
public debates over religion in the social sphere, such as the installation of
crucifixes in classrooms and the introduction of “life skills, ethics, and religion” (Lebenskunde / Ethik / Religion) as a compulsory, nondenominational
course to replace religious education in schools.2 The spotlight has been on
religious conflicts and religiously motivated violence as well as on issues that
accentuate religious differences, for example, whether female Muslim teachers should be allowed to cover their hair in school and whether, and where,
mosques may be built.3 Occasionally, religion itself becomes a media topic.
The new millennium, for instance, was an opportunity for reflection on
the Christian roots of Western culture, and the highly public death of Pope
John Paul II in April 2005 was perceived as a religious event, even a provocative or irritating one.4 Islam, which, unlike Christian churches, is experiencing growth in Europe, is also featured in the media, though as a potential
source of the meaningfulness of life that secular society appears to have lost.
In this way, the media’s coverage and staging of religion have contributed to
an increase in the visibility of religion, and even institutionalized religion, in
1 See José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994).
2 See Joachim von Soosten, “Öffentlichkeit und Evidenz – Evangelische Kirchen im öffentlichen Wettbewerb. Ein Bericht zur Lage in Deutschland,” Jahrbuch für Christliche Sozialwissenschaften 44 (2003): 40–1; Karl Gabriel and Hans-Joachim Höhn, eds., Religion
heute – öffentlich und politisch. Provokationen, Kontroversen, Perspektiven (Paderborn:
Schöningh, 2008); and Christel Gärtner, “Die Rückkehr der Religion in der politischen
und medialen Öffentlichkeit,” in Gabriel and Höhn, Religion heute.
3 See Werner Schiffauer, Migration und kulturelle Differenz (Berlin: Ausländerbeauftragte
des Senats, 2002) and Monika Wohlrab-Sahr and Levent Tezcan, eds., Konfliktfeld Islam
in Europa (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2007).
4 See Michaela Pilters, “Der ‘Gebrauchswert’ einer Religion,” in Buckower Mediengespräche.
Die Medien und die Gretchenfrage, ed. Hans-Dieter Felsmann (Munich: Kopaed, 2006).
69
the public sphere but, at the same time, to continuing shifts in the discourse
on religion.5
In this paper, I will present some of the findings of “Religion among Opinion Makers,”6 our study of the visibility of religion in media and politics. I will
first outline the study’s questions, objects, and methodology (section 2), and
then present some of its results (section 3). My principal interest concerns the
patterns of interpretation that elite journalists adopt as they write about religion. I approach this from two perspectives: religion as an object of professional journalistic practice (3.1) and religion as a subjective factor, i. e., the extent to which the journalists’ own religious attitudes affect their view of the
world, their understanding of contemporary history and society, and their
professional ethics (3.2). In the concluding section, I will summarize my findings in section 3 and apply them toward understanding the conditions for media inclusion and exclusion of religion (4).
2. Research questions, objects, and methodology
Our study focuses on news coverage of religion in the public sphere.7 The relationship between religion and the media in modern societies is ambivalent.
Religions have always used media to disseminate their messages, and modern mass media offer religion a chance to heighten public awareness of itself
outside of the church, yet the media themselves have no particular commitment to religion. Thus, modern mass media both shape the public’s image of
religion, as research on, especially, the image of Islam has shown,8 and play a
5 See Frank Bösch and Lucian Hölscher, “Die Kirchen im öffentlichen Diskurs,” in Kirchen –
Medien – Öffentlichkeit. Transformationen kirchlicher Selbst- und Fremddeutungen seit
1945, eds. Frank Bösch and Lucian Hölscher (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2009), 18.
6 Karl Gabriel and Hans-Richard Reuter led the research project, carried out at the University of Münster, with funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the
Adolf-Loges-Stiftung. Christel Gärtner, Karl Gabriel, and Hans-Richard Reuter, Religion
bei Meinungsmachern. Eine Untersuchung bei Elitejournalisten in Deutschland (Wiesbaden: VS -Verlag, 2012).
7 See Karl Gabriel, “Säkularisierung und öffentliche Religion. Religionssoziologische Anmerkungen mit Blick auf den europäischen Kontext,” Jahrbuch für Christliche Sozialwissenschaften 44 (2003): 13–36; and Hans-Richard Reuter, “Öffentliche Meinung,” in
Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Handwörterbuch für Theologie und Religionswissenschaft, vol. 6, 4th ed., ed. Hans Dieter Betz et al. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003).
8 See, for example, Anne Hoffmann, Islam in den Medien. Der publizistische Konflikt um
Annemarie Schimmel (Münster: Lit, 2004); Sabine Schiffer, Die Darstellung des Islams
in der Presse: Sprache, Bilder, Suggestionen. Eine Auswahl von Techniken und Beispielen
(Würzburg: Ergon, 2005); and Dirk Halm, “Zur Wahrnehmung des Islams und zur soziokulturellen Teilhabe der Muslime in Deutschland” (unpublished manuscript, 2006).
70
Christel Gärtner
part in transforming religion and religions. There is a dialectical movement
between the way churches and religions see themselves and the way the media
see them. On the one hand, media presentations change public perceptions of
religions, while, on the other hand, churches and religious communities respond to those changes with their own reinterpretations.9
However, the study did not examine the media’s representation of religious
issues. Instead, it investigated the significance that public opinion makers in
the media ascribe to religion and communicate to society. Our research was
guided by questions regarding the selection criteria for coverage of religion,
the relevance and news value that journalists attributed to religion, their perception of religious events, and how they represent the changing function
and meaning of religion in society. We were also interested in journalists’
own understanding of religion, their religious identities, their commitment
to religious norms, and the relevance of religion to professional ethics in their
everyday journalistic practice.
These interests determined the subject of our research, namely, the group
of influential leader writers and political columnists known as the Commentariat. This comparatively small group of opinion makers, which is also
called a “public-sphere elite,”10 interprets social developments, and its views
are very influential. We hypothesized that this highly professional minority forms a kind of vanguard of changes in perceptions of the relationship
between religion and the public sphere and is itself an active participant in
establishing new boundaries between the two. We interviewed a total of
18 journalists who either hold leading positions on editorial teams for politics, culture, or news or write opinion pieces. The media they represent are
German supra-regional daily and weekly papers, public television and radio
broadcasters, and private broadcasters. We used contrasting criteria for gender, generation, regional origin, and religious background in selecting our
subjects. One-third were women, who are more strongly represented among
the younger respondents. Germany’s two major Christian denominations,
Catholicism and Lutheranism, were approximately equally represented. One
journalist from eastern Germany was included — the only one who did not
have a religious upbringing. Atheists are hard to find among Germany’s elite
journalists, as are members of religious minorities.
9 This highly complex situation is described in Bösch’s and Hölscher’s volume Kirchen –
Medien – Öffentlichkeit, which explains how the structural transformation of the public
sphere in the 1960s changed the ways that churches communicate.
10 On the term “Öffentlichkeitselite,” see Christiane Eilders, Friedhelm Neidhardt, and
Barbara Pfetsch, Die Stimme der Medien. Pressekommentare und politische Öffentlichkeit
in der Bundesrepublik (Wiesbaden: VS -Verlag, 2004).
71
We carried out a combination of narrative-biographical11 and expert interviews12 with all of the journalists. These were recorded and transcribed.
On the basis of the interviews, we reconstructed, first, typical patterns of interpretation and argumentation and, second, interviewees’ professional and
religious habitus-formation.13 Interviewees’ statements were interpreted in
terms of their narrative contexts. In addition to their subjective attitudes, we
were particularly interested in latent meanings and habitual patterns of action
and interpretation.14
The interviews were carried out between June 2006 and April 2007, which
explains a dominance of Christianity in the results, as the death of John Paul
II and the election of Benedict XVI were still very recent events and had a positive effect on perceptions of the Catholic Church (although this had changed
by the end of the decade as cases of child abuse came to light). For this reason, our study may appear to show more extensive coverage of the Christian
religion than is actually the case.15 A further high-profile event may also have
influenced interviewees’ perceptions, viz., the attacks of September 11, 2001,
which intensified political interest in Islam. Although our research was not
specifically directed at the treatment of religious minorities, in the following I will look at interviewees’ opinions on this issue, especially with regard to
Islam, which is the subject of far more attention than other religious minorities. Clearly, our findings on Islam are historically specific, and if the interviews had been conducted today the results might have been very different. In
recent years, the fixation on Islam as a source of conflicts has lessened slightly,
11 See Fritz Schütze, “Biographieforschung und narratives Interview,” Neue Praxis 3 (1983):
283–93.
12 See Michael Meuser and Ulrike Nagel, “Experteninterviews – Wissenssoziologische
Voraussetzungen und methodische Durchführung,” in Handbuch Qualitative Forschungsmethoden in der Erziehungswissenschaft, eds. Barbara Friebertshäuser, Antje Langer, and
Annedore Prengel (Weinheim: Juventa, 2010).
13 For details of our analysis of habitus, see Gärtner, Gabriel, and Reuter, Religion bei
Meinungsmachern, 123–255. Because journalists are members of the society on which
they report and reflect, attitudes to which they do not have conscious access will always
influence their work.
14 On procedures of case reconstruction and their methodological foundations, see Klaus
Kraimer, ed., Die Fallrekonstruktion. Sinnverstehen in der sozialwissenschaftlichen Forschung (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000); Ulrich Oevermann, “Die Methode der
Fallrekonstruktion in der Grundlagenforschung sowie der klinischen und pädagogischen
Praxis,” in Kraimer, Die Fallrekonstruktion; Uwe Flick, ed., Qualitative Sozialforschung.
Eine Einführung, 6th ed. (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2002); Andreas Wernet, Einführung in die Interpretationstechnik der Objektiven Hermeneutik. Qualitative Sozialforschung (Wiesbaden: VS -Verlag, 2006); and Aglaja Przyborski and Monika WohlrabSahr, Qualitative Sozialforschung. Ein Arbeitsbuch (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2008).
15 Viewed over the long term, media attention to religion appears to undulate between
peaks and troughs. See Bösch and Hölscher, “Die Kirchen im öffentlichen Diskurs,” 8.
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Christel Gärtner
due partly to reflection on the part of journalists and partly to the increased
presence of Muslim Germans in the media. These changes have produced a
significant expansion in the range of themes covered.
3. Elite journalists’ patterns of interpretation
regarding religion
In this section, I will characterize some of the patterns of interpretation with
regard to religion that we found among interviewees, which I arrange as a series of propositions.16 The analysis first addresses selection criteria for media coverage, the relevance of religion for coverage, and interviewees’ views of
religion (3.1) and, then, the ways in which their religious self-understanding
influences their actions in the coverage of religion and in their professional
ethics (3.2).
3.1 Religion as an object of professional journalistic practice¹⁷
First proposition: The selection of religious themes for media coverage complies with criteria typical of the media system as a whole.
This proposition states that the perceived newsworthiness of religion is
subject to the same selection criteria as other topics: meaningfulness, mass
appeal, unexpectedness, the status of speakers, their orientation on conflict
and scandal, and a certain preoccupation with quantitative data, for example, a rise or drop in the number of people leaving a church. Only in exceptional cases, and depending on their personal habitus-formation, do journalists decide to devote space to religious topics as such, perhaps because they
observe society’s loss of tradition and do not want to support it.18 Overall,
however, the data suggest that, for the most part, journalists subscribe to a
systems-theoretical mirror-model of the public sphere.19 We observed no
ambition on the part of interviewees that their work contribute actively to
changes in the society’s understanding of religion.
16 These propositions are presented in Gärtner, Gabriel, and Reuter, Religion bei Meinungsmachern, chapter 2 (written by Karl Gabriel and Hans-Richard Reuter).
17 For further detail, see ibid., 33–67.
18 See ibid., 167.
19 See Niklas Luhmann, The Reality of the Mass Media, trans. Kathleen Cross (Cambridge:
Polity Press, 2000). Systems theory holds that the mass media offer society and its actors a
reality-constructing mirror to observe both events and the observers of events.
73
Second proposition: Media coverage of religion is based primarily on religion’s social and political effects and pursues an inclusionary strategy.
As one interviewee put it, the media cover religion for worldly, not religious, reasons.20 The decisive factors are social and political significance.
Around two-thirds of German citizens still belong to a church, and the Christian churches are a factor in public life, if only because of their constitutionally protected status, to which status other religious communities aspire. At
the same time, the number of immigrants with non-Christian backgrounds
is rising markedly, so that religious minorities are also becoming a subject of
interest. Irrespective of their religious affiliation, the majority of interviewees
advocate a paradigm of inclusion. That is to say, most of them accept that religion and the churches should have a place in the public sphere and view the
social influence of religious representatives as both significant and legitimate.
In contrast, exclusively religious themes or themes internal to the churches
call less for news coverage or commentary. Religiosity itself is alien to the
media system and is therefore seldom addressed; it is generally regarded as a
private matter. Nevertheless, journalists occasionally take Christian holidays
such as Christmas or Easter as opportunities to go beyond the everyday business of politics and write something “timeless” on religious issues, for example, a reflection on theodicy.21 As a rule, journalists working in the area of the
arts and culture are more likely to feel an affinity with religious questions,
their interest in literature having familiarized them with the contemplation of
transcendental matters or the sublime.
The journalists we interviewed cite three main reasons for the growing interest in religion in the mediatized public sphere.
(1) A special sensitivity to religiously motivated conflicts and violence. Our
interviewees find that Islam, in particular, has made the public aware of the
pivotal role of religion in many political conflicts across the world. They argue
that media coverage of religion has changed since the 9/11 attacks. They believe that the global framework of religious conflicts and the various religions’
attitudes towards violence have become the focus of media attention. In this
context, they perceive Islam primarily as a religion that has not sufficiently
clarified its relationship with other religions and its stance on violence. They
accuse Islam of failing to incorporate the Enlightenment values that to a certain extent pacified Christianity and led to the separation of church and state.
Coverage of the dangers of religious violence — dangers that they see as associated with the expansion of Islam — stimulates more general reflections on the
theme of religion. As one interviewee explains:
20 Gärtner, Gabriel, and Reuter, Religion bei Meinungsmachern, 55.
21 Ibid., 60.
74
Christel Gärtner
And as a result we are looking into this and we have to think about it, because it
threatens us ourselves, our way of life, our freedom, our concept of tolerance, and all
that obviously puts religion on the agenda every day.22
The difficulties of intercultural communication in everyday life and especially
the political topicality of religiously motivated terrorism, the global spread of
Islamism, and the Middle East conflict, all make religion a privileged subject
of media coverage. In addition, such phenomena generate qualitative changes
in the perception of religion: according to the interviewees, the conflicts
among religions and between religion and society show that, far from being a
private matter, religion is a crucial source of violence, political tension, and
conflict in the world. This makes national and international dialogue on religion extremely important. Today, religion is becoming more accepted as a constitutive component of culture. Another journalist remarks:
And in this context, of course, we discuss it heatedly, and at the moment, these years,
you’ll find the topic very widespread in all the German media and also with us, and
anyone who thought that religion was a private affair, well of course in this context
they’ve had to think again. Religion affects everyone, regardless of whether they personally are believers, but religion affects everyone because political dialogue cannot
exclude the topic of religion, as you can see very clearly these days because everyone
is affected by the claims of religion both in an ethical respect and in a democracy, but
also in the separation of religion and state, for example in Islam. And that means dialogue within Germany and international dialogue is affected, so we are increasingly
realizing that the dialogue between states has to be a dialogue about cultures, an important component of which are the religions; that’s to say, it’s impossible to ignore
religion in any international dialogue, in any intercultural dialogue, and anyone who
tries to do so will probably be leaving aside the most important part, which at the moment is causing tension in the world.23
(2) A second factor informing the new interest in religion stands in contrast
to the media’s preference for covering interrelationships between religion and
conflict. According to our interviewees, the Christian religion and churches
are attracting growing media attention because of their unique role as guarantors of public morality and the common good. When it comes to questions of
principle about social coexistence, interviewees say, the voice of the churches
is indispensable.
(3) The third reason, which our interviewees consider particularly characteristic of the media’s new interest in religion, is that, as the public death of
the Pope, the subsequent papal election, and the new Pope’s visit to Germany
22 Ibid., 56. For the transcription conventions, see ibid., 279; the German excerpts were
slightly streamlined for readability.
23 Ibid., 57.
75
in 2005 and 2006 show, religion in the age of television and the Internet can
generate unimagined religious staging. Since the days of the media pioneer
John Paul II, Catholicism has been successful in combining the media’s interest in grand spectacles with the Church’s self-staging. This success may be
explained in part by the fact that the media depend on the embodiment of religion in tangible institutions and charismatic, photogenic personalities.
Third proposition: Religion is taken to be relevant not only to individuals
but also (and especially) to institutions and the cultural more generally.
Our interviewees do not distinguish among the churches, religion, and
Christianity nor do they have a sophisticated concept of religion. This finding was not unexpected. On the one hand, they are able to think about religion and religiousness in a framework wider than ecclesiasticism. Indeed, this
would be hard to avoid given that religious pluralism, which is growing as a
result of globalization and migration, includes religious traditions that do not
form churches, such as Islam and Buddhism.24 Interviewees also see a rising
tension between institutional religion and the subjective aspect of religion, an
expression which can be found in those forms of worship outside the Church
that have come to the fore as a result of the New Age movement. On the other
hand, almost all of the journalists we interviewed find a completely individualistic form of religion unimaginable. They find it hard to imagine a religion
devoid of all connection to a larger community since any such religion would
be unable to build a tradition or exert influence on society. Likewise, our respondents do not believe that the novelty value of alternative forms of religiousness favors their mass-media amplification and popularization.
Three dimensions of religion may be distinguished: (1) the individual or
personal, (2) the institutional and organized, and (3) the cultural. Interviewees consider the first to be an option for individuals. They believe that institutional religion is considerably more relevant to the mediatized public sphere
because they regard religious organizations as a necessary and legitimate
means for religion to increase its opportunities to influence society. However,
they ascribe the greatest importance to the third dimension, as it is the provider of religion.
24 See Franz-Xaver Kaufmann, “Die Entwicklung von Religion in der modernen Gesellschaft,” in Religion, Kirche, Islam. Eine soziale und diakonische Herausforderung, ed.
Klaus D. Hildemann (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2003), 31–5.
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Christel Gärtner
3.2 Religion as a subjective factor²⁵
In the following, I will discuss the extent to which our interviewees’ religious
self-understanding shapes their views on contemporary history and society
and on their professional ethics.
Fourth proposition: In general, a new visibility and public presence for religion can be observed.
Interviewees’ comments on this matter follow four patterns of explanation
and interpretation.
(1) The new interest in religion can be interpreted as a “cultural defense”26
in response to Islam. Some interviewees regard the Islamist attacks on September 11, 2001, and the new religious pluralism in Germany arising from its
large Muslim population as causes of a return to Christian roots. They take
this to explain the media’s dual interest in religion’s potential for conflict27
and its integrative function. Most of the interviewees in our sample see the
interweaving of Christianity, humanism, and the Enlightenment as the basis
of peaceful coexistence, but they tend to deny that Islam is capable of a similar combination. Nevertheless, some acknowledge that Islam emphasizes the
vivid commitment and cohesion that religion can generate. According to the
interviewees, the new public presence of Christianity is the result of nativeborn Germans’ need to reassure themselves of their own religious and cultural identity. For example:
Faced with the attack on our ways of life and our convictions — the ones we have
founded our society on, that we have set down in laws and constitutions and humanrights declarations — combined with … religious attacks coming from parts of Islam,
I do see something like a … reinvigoration of Christian self-confidence.28
(2) On questions of social justice and the biomedical manipulation of human
nature, churches in Germany are ethical agents and defenders of the common
good. Even if most of the journalists in our sample do not consider religion
relevant to the conduct of their own lives, they ascribe an important societal
role to Christianity as a foundation for ethics, morality, and a sense of direc25 See Gärtner, Gabriel, and Reuter, Religion bei Meinungsmachern, 68–118.
26 Steve Bruce, “What the Secularization Paradigm Really Says,” in Religiosität in der säkularisierten Welt. Theoretische und empirische Beiträge zur Säkularisierungsdebatte in
der Religionssoziologie, eds. Manuel Franzmann, Christel Gärtner, and Nicole Köck
(Wiesbaden: VS -Verlag, 2006). “Cultural defense” refers to a countertrend to secularization consisting of “circumstances in which people will forego the benefits of increasing
individual liberty and freedom and remain committed to community models of identity
in which religion remains central” (ibid., 42). Applied to our case, this means the defense
of Christian, culturally Christian, or secular values.
27 Gärtner, Gabriel, and Reuter, Religion bei Meinungsmachern, 86.
28 Ibid., 85.
77
tion in life. This suggests that our subjects believe that they are seeing a social crisis that gives questions of values and their grounding a special urgency.
(3) The character of large-scale religious events has proven to be especially
inviting of mass-media coverage. Thanks to its talent for staging, the Catholic
Church proved to be particularly attractive to mass media in 2005 and 2006.
(4) The new public presence of religion depends on the charisma of individuals, which the media amplify. During the period of our research, the especially charismatic leaders were Cardinal Karl Lehmann, president of the German Bishops’ Conference; Bishop Wolfgang Huber, chair of the Council of the
Evangelical Church in Germany; and Paul Spiegel, president of the Central
Council of Jews in Germany. The media presence of representatives of Muslim
associations was still quite minor at the time, though this has since changed.
Fifth proposition: Organized, institutional Christianity remains the reference
point for interviewees’ religious self-understanding, whether critical or affirmative, but their perceptions of the compatibility between institutional requirements and individual religious sensibilities differ according to denomination.
Thirteen of the interviewees are members of either the Lutheran or the
Catholic Church. On the basis of baptism, all but one has a Christian background. It proved very difficult to find a single representative of an atheist
identity among the elite journalists. Despite substantial differences in the influence of their religious backgrounds and the extent of their disengagement
from it, all of the interviewees still think about religion in terms of Christianity
and the Christian Churches, whether approvingly or critically. It is here that
denominational differences are most striking. For Catholics, there is tension
between doctrinal moral norms and decisions of conscience taken on one’s
own responsibility, whereas for Protestants conflicts tend to arise from aesthetic or intellectual preferences that diverge from those of church authorities.
Among the socially relevant functions of religion, interviewees name especially the meaningful interpretation of human existence and the moral
guidance of action. They don’t necessarily combine both; some report a commitment to Christian values without a belief in God. The majority considers
the ideology of critically unmasking and devaluing religion, an attitude long
dominant among intellectuals, as anachronistic.
Sixth proposition: Allegiance to standards of professional ethics does not
depend on an individual’s values or religious attitude.
All of the interviewees share a binding commitment to respect for human
dignity as the highest moral principle. Professional associations and training
institutions are most responsible for passing on the fundamental standards of
professional ethics set down in the guidelines of the German Press Council.
The interviewees believe it is necessary to update the profession’s code in
order to reinforce the media’s autonomy and independence from political influence. However, they note that the bases of situationally appropriate deci© 2016, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen
78
Christel Gärtner
sions in everyday journalistic life, especially in reflecting on the consequences
of one’s actions, subjects’ right to privacy, and the portrayal of violence, usually exceed what can be codified in general rules or taught as part of training. Instead, practical learning on the job and case-specific reflection in the
editorial peer group are vital. Our analysis of the working habitus of the elite
journalists we interviewed reveals that they have a fully formed professional
habitus. The same is not true of journalism as a system, which is in need of
further professionalization.29
4. Conclusions
(1) Concerning the media approach toward religion we observe changes
since the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, the West German media pursued a
strategy of exclusion,30 which marginalized the churches and excluded them
from the circle of socially relevant agents, but the journalists we interviewed
advocate a strategy of notable inclusion. They rate churches and religions
highly as a force in civil society and see them as fulfilling the important function of providing a foundation for society’s values. Our subjects are becoming more aware of the need to preserve Western culture and are recollecting
their own roots, which some also wish to strengthen. Yet the media inclusion
and consequent cultural renaissance of the Christian religion may go hand in
hand with the hardening of attitudes against Islam. This risk arises when citizens feel that their personal identities or the internal cohesion of society is under threat.
(2) The media’s exclusion or inclusion of religion may be considered in
terms of the state of tension and conflict within the realm of religion. The old
tensions among the Christian denominations, perceptible in Germany well
into the 1960s, are now almost completely a thing of the past (even if they
can still be glimpsed occasionally as, for example, when Protestant journalists complain of exaggerated “Pope hype”). The new lines of conflict run, on
the one hand, between the religious and the secular and, on the other, between
the culturally Christian and Islam. In terms of their responses to the public presence of religion and, thus, of religious minorities, our analysis of their
religious habitus reveals three different types of journalist.31 The first type
consists of journalists who maintain an institutional affiliation to Christianity,
even if it is not necessarily accompanied by religious commitments, and take a
29 Ibid., 201–204.
30 See Pilters, “Der ‘Gebrauchswert’ einer Religion,” 67–72.
31 See Gärtner, Gabriel, and Reuter, Religion bei Meinungsmachern, 123–96.
79
positive attitude towards religion. This has two consequences. These journalists reflect on the limitations of the Enlightenment and secularity, and
they are more likely to perceive Islam as a religion that generates values and
community. As a result, they are more inclined towards the inclusion of religious minorities in media coverage. The second type lacks any religious affiliation but acknowledges the sociopolitical engagement of Christianity and
the churches, and even welcomes them for their ability to protect minorities.
However, they perceive Christianity primarily as a culture and not as a religion. This attitude is frequently associated with intolerance towards Islam,
which is perceived as “culturally alien” and thus tends to result in the media
exclusion of religious minorities. Another form of “cultural defense,” but one
with a different slant, can be found in the third type, which has a more secularist habitus. These journalists combine a positive view of the Enlightenment
with an “enlightened intolerance” towards all religions, acknowledging their
rights solely in the private sphere. This type generally argues for an exclusion
of religion from public space.
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Flick, Uwe, ed. Qualitative Sozialforschung. Eine Einführung. 6th ed. Reinbek bei Hamburg:
Rowohlt, 2002.
Gabriel, Karl. “Säkularisierung und öffentliche Religion. Religionssoziologische Anmerkungen
mit Blick auf den europäischen Kontext.” Jahrbuch für Christliche Sozialwissenschaften 44
(2003): 13–36.
Gabriel, Karl, and Hans-Joachim Höhn, eds. Religion heute – öffentlich und politisch. Provokationen, Kontroversen, Perspektiven. Paderborn: Schöningh, 2008.
Gärtner, Christel. “Die Rückkehr der Religion in der politischen und medialen Öffentlichkeit.” In Religion heute – öffentlich und politisch. Provokationen, Kontroversen, Perspektiven,
edited by Karl Gabriel and Hans-Joachim Höhn. Paderborn: Schöningh, 2008.
Gärtner, Christel, Karl Gabriel, and Hans-Richard Reuter. Religion bei Meinungsmachern. Eine
Untersuchung bei Elitejournalisten in Deutschland. Wiesbaden: VS -Verlag, 2012.
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Halm, Dirk. “Zur Wahrnehmung des Islams und zur sozio-kulturellen Teilhabe der Muslime
in Deutschland.” Unpublished manuscript, 2006.
Hoffmann, Anne. Islam in den Medien. Der publizistische Konflikt um Annemarie Schimmel.
Münster: Lit, 2004.
Kaufmann, Franz-Xaver. “Die Entwicklung von Religion in der modernen Gesellschaft.” In
Religion, Kirche, Islam. Eine soziale und diakonische Herausforderung, edited by Klaus D.
Hildemann. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2003.
Kraimer, Klaus, ed. Die Fallrekonstruktion. Sinnverstehen in der sozialwissenschaftlichen Forschung. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000.
Luhmann, Niklas. The Reality of the Mass Media. Translated by Kathleen Cross. Cambridge:
Polity Press, 2000.
Meuser, Michael, and Ulrike Nagel. “Experteninterviews – Wissenssoziologische Voraussetzungen und methodische Durchführung.” In Handbuch Qualitative Forschungsmethoden
in der Erziehungswissenschaft, edited by Barbara Friebertshäuser, Antje Langer, and
Annedore Prengel. Weinheim: Juventa, 2010.
Oevermann, Ulrich. “Die Methode der Fallrekonstruktion in der Grundlagenforschung
sowie der klinischen und pädagogischen Praxis.” In Die Fallrekonstruktion. Sinnverstehen
in der sozialwissenschaftlichen Forschung, edited by Klaus Kraimer. Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 2000.
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Medien und die Gretchenfrage, edited by Hans-Dieter Felsmann. Munich: Kopaed, 2006.
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Munich: Oldenbourg, 2008.
Reuter, Hans-Richard. “Öffentliche Meinung.” In Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Handwörterbuch für Theologie und Religionswissenschaft, vol. 6, 4th ed., edited by Hans Dieter
Betz et al. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003.
Schiffer, Sabine. Die Darstellung des Islams in der Presse: Sprache, Bilder, Suggestionen. Eine
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Schiffauer, Werner. Migration und kulturelle Differenz. Berlin: Ausländerbeauftragte des
Senats, 2002.
von Soosten, Joachim. “Öffentlichkeit und Evidenz – Evangelische Kirchen im öffentlichen
Wettbewerb. Ein Bericht zur Lage in Deutschland.” Jahrbuch für Christliche Sozialwissenschaften 44 (2003): 37–51.
Wernet, Andreas. Einführung in die Interpretationstechnik der Objektiven Hermeneutik. Qualitative Sozialforschung. Wiesbaden: VS -Verlag, 2006.
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Nomos, 2007.
Abstract
Die Studie »Religion bei Meinungsmachern«, die mit Elitejournalisten in
Deutschland durchgeführt wurde, untersucht die Frage, wie Journalisten Religion wahrnehmen, deuten und medial kommunizieren. In dem vorliegenden
Beitrag stelle ich einige Ergebnisse der Studie vor, und zwar zentrale Deutungsmuster der meinungsbildenden Journalist*innen im Umgang mit Religion.
Zum einen wird Religion als Gegenstand der professionellen journalistischen
Praxis beleuchtet, wobei es um die Auswahlkriterien der Berichterstattung
und das Religionsverständnis der Journalistinnen und Journalisten geht. Zum
81
anderen als subjektiver Faktor hinsichtlich des eigenen religiösen Selbstverständnisses der Befragten. Es wird dargelegt, inwieweit das religiöse Selbstverständnis die Zeit- und Gesellschaftsdiagnose sowie die berufsethischen Entscheidungen beeinflusst. Die journalistische Wahrnehmung und Deutung
von Religion wird sowohl allgemein als auch im Hinblick auf den Islam in den
Blick kommen.
Prof. Dr. Christel Gärtner is a mentor at the graduate school based in the excellence
cluster “Religion und Politik der Kulturen der Vormoderne und Moderne” [Religion
and Politics of Cultures of the Pre-Modern and Modern Cultures] at the University of
Münster in Germany. She is also the Head of the research project: “Islam und Gender
in Deutschland. Zur (De-)Konstruktion säkular und religiös legitimierter Geschlechterordnungen” [Islam and Gender in Germany. On the (De)Construction of Secularly
and Religiously Legitimised Gender Relations]. The areas of emphasis in her work and
research are, among others, the sociology of culture and religion (religion in contemporary society, religion and media, and analysis of religious processes of education
and transformation); socialization studies and analysis of individual and collective
identities, of social milieux, and of solidarity-based and professional actions. Current publication: Sinnverlust: “Religion, Moral und postmoderne Beliebigkeit” [Loss
of Meaning: Religion, Morality and Post-modern Randomness], in: Handbuch Soziologie, edited by Hartmut Rosa, Henning Laux, Jörn Lamla and David Strecker, UVK
Konstanz, pp. 473–488 (2014).
Chapter 2
Media Representation and
Stereotyping of Minorities
Daniel Wildmann
German Television Crime Films and
German Emotions
Jews in Tatort
Crime films deal with law and justice. They discuss the order of society — concretely, the violations and the restoration of order. What can we discover
about German society, when Jews in popular contemporary German TV
crime films are declared as suspects? Two episodes from well-known German
crime series place Jewish characters at the center of murder cases. What order
of current German society do they present, when their films negotiate images
of Jews and Judaism?
In December 2003 and January 2004, two crime films were broadcast for
the first time on ARD, one of German television’s public stations: the Tatort
[Crime Scene] “The Slaughterer” and the Schimanski episode “The Secret of
the Golem.” “The Slaughterer” takes place in Constance on Lake Constance,
while “The Secret of the Golem” disentangles itself between Antwerp and
Duisburg. Both films try to deal with perceptions of Jews and the phenomenon of antisemitism; as can be demonstrated, however, antisemitism also
haunts both films. These two levels of meaning and their relationship to one
another stand at the center of this analysis. My focus is on the staging of the
main characters. It is a matter of dramaturgic triangulations of Jewish protagonists, non-Jewish detective chief inspectors, and non-Jewish villains.
Both in the constellations and in the construction of the individual characters
themselves, the two aforementioned levels are conflated in a strange way. I attend particularly to the question: How do visual language, body language, and
emotions combine with moral sentiments in these two episodes?
1.
The Phenomenon Tatort
In 1970, ARD produced the first episode of Tatort — the legendary “Taxi to
Leipzig.” Tatort was originally planned as a crime series for two years but then
turned into an extremely popular TV show and is one of the most-watched
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German television series to this day.1 Unlike the crime series of ZDF, the other
public station, such as Derrick or Der Kommissar [The Detective Inspector],
which exclude current political, societal, and cultural conflicts a priori, ARD
banked on the idea of taking up and discussing political topics explicitly and
constantly in Tatort.2 Thus, Tatort can also be understood as a “chronicle of
the German present from 1970 until today” and as an archive of socio-political debates in Germany about Germany during the last 50 years.3 If the direct
reference to societal conflicts is one important hallmark of the series, then another central principle is regionalism. Once again unlike in Derrick, for example, Tatort is not based on one detective chief inspector but on several teams of
different detective chief inspectors, who are located in various regions: there
are, to name only a few, the Hamburg Tatort, the Dresden Tatort, or the Ruhr
area Tatort.4 Tatort is not only a crime series but also a series about different
regional identities — put another way: about various expressions of Germanness. The third central feature of Tatort is the time slot: always on Sundays at
8:15 pm.5
Klara Blum, on duty since 2002, is one of the series’ few main female detective chief inspectors. Schimanski is considered perhaps the most popular
Tatort detective chief inspector, not least because of his physical appearance,
which — for the first time in the history of Tatort — evokes a belonging to the
working class as well as total independence from societal and professionally
required social hierarchies. The character Schimanski was active from 1981
to 1991, returning to the screen as a spin-off in 1997 with his own mini-series
entitled Schimanski — in the same time slot as Tatort and in rotation with
Tatort — but now as a private investigator.6
1 On the term “series,” see Christian Hißnauer, Stefan Scherer, and Claudia Stockinger,
Föderalismus in Serie: Die Einheit der ARD -Reihe Tatort im historischen Verlauf (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2014), 23–56, as well as Hans Krah, “Erzählen in Folge. Eine Systematisierung narrativer Forschungszusammenhänge,” in Strategien der Filmanalyse –
reloaded. Festschrift für Klaus Kanzog, ed. Michael Schaudig (München: diskurs film
Verlag, 2010), 85–114.
2 Ingrid Brück et al., Der Deutsche Fernsehkrimi. Eine Programm- und Produktionsgeschichte
von den Anfängen bis heute (Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler, 2003), 158–161.
3 Hißnauer, Scherer, and Stockinger, Föderalismus in Serie, 9–14; quote, ibid., 12. See also
Dennis Gräf, Tatort. Ein populäres Medium als kultureller Speicher (Marburg: Schüren
Verlag, 2010), 8–28.
4 See also Brück et al., Der Deutsche Fernsehkrimi, 161–163; Hendrik Buhl, Tatort. Gesellschaftspolitische Themen in der Krimireihe (München: UVK Verlagsgesellschaft, 2013),
23–37.
5 On the telepolitical background of this time slot, see Brück et al., Der Deutsche Fernsehkrimi, 202–210 and 277–280.
6 On Schimanski, see Eike Wenzel, “Der Star, sein Körper und die Nation. Die SchimanskiTatorte,” in Ermittlungen in Sachen Tatort. Recherchen und Verhöre, Protokolle und Beweisfotos (Berlin: Dieter Bertz Verlag, 2000), 175–202.
German Television Crime Films and German Emotions
87
Today, Tatort enjoys an extremely strong media presence. Thus, for instance, the online editions of Der Spiegel and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung publish preliminary reports as well as film reviews on the episode being
aired on a given Sunday. No other crime series on German television enjoys
this privilege.7 There are special websites run by fans, which meticulously list
production details for each broadcast Tatort and by now are known as reliable
sources, also consulted by established journalists and scholars.8 On Sundays,
people enjoy Tatort not only on their own, privately in front of the television,
but also with others in bars, pubs, and restaurants, which advertise intensively
for their public Tatort events. No other television crime series on German TV
stations can claim such a phenomenon of “public viewing.” By now, watching
Tatort and discussing it with friends and colleagues is a part of German everyday culture.9 To examine Tatort from a scholarly standpoint means precisely
this: to speak about everyday culture and so about present or past moral values in Germany — in our context: about everyday culture and the place of Jews
and Judaism in this everyday culture.
2. Visual Language and Emotion —
the Film Studies Approach to Emotions
In the various scholarly disciplines — the natural and social sciences and the
humanities — , we can differentiate two fundamentally divergent approaches
to understanding emotion:10 On the one hand, emotions are regarded as a
purely material phenomenon. They are ultimately considered to be traceable
to a neuronal or physiological basis and so are to be categorized exclusively
7 The regular advance column in Der Spiegel runs under the keyword “Tatort in Fast
Check;” the post-airing Tatort-column under “Tatort in Fact Check.” The FAZ publishes
its report afterwards under the keyword “Securing the Crime Scene [Tatortsicherung].”
The film reviews on Spiegel Online and in the FAZ have titles that refer to the titles of the
relevant episodes and are sometimes published in advance and sometimes the following day.
8 See, for example, www.tatort-fundus.de.
9 On this issue, see also Regina Bendix et al., “Lesen, Sehen, Hängenbleiben. Zur Integration serieller Narrative im Alltag ihrer Nutzerinnen und Nutzer,” in Populäre Serialität:
Narration – Evolution – Distinktion. Zum seriellen Erzählen seit dem 19. Jahrhundert, ed.
Frank Kelleter (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2012), 293–319; on the public viewing of
Tatort, see Arne Freya Zillich, Fernsehen als Event. Unterhaltungserleben bei der Fernsehrezeption in der Gruppe (Köln: Herbert von Halem Verlag, 2013).
10 On this issue, see Jan Plamper, Geschichte und Gefühl. Grundlagen der Emotionsgeschichte (Berlin: Siedler Verlag, 2012); Florian Weber, “Von den klassischen Affektenlehren zur Neurowissenschaft und zurück. Wege der Emotionsforschung in den Geistesund Sozialwissenschaften,” Neue Politische Literatur 53, no. 1 (2008): 21–42.
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as a somatic phenomenon. History or culture do not play a role in this explanatory model. Opposed to this view, the second approach shaping the debate
argues, on the other hand, that emotions are to be understood, in large part
if not perhaps even exclusively, as culturally contingent and thus historically
variable phenomena. Or, put another way: the debate surrounding emotions
constitutes and articulates itself as a conflict between scientism — the idea that
nothing lies outside the sciences — and culturalism — the notion that nothing
human lies outside the cultural. Current approaches in film studies attempt to
mediate between these two positions or rather to combine them. From these
perspectives, emotions can be understood as simultaneously dynamic, somatic, and cognitive phenomena.11
Films can offer us an excellent way to analyze feelings, for they tell their
stories primarily with the help of emotions — it is not coincidental that many
film genres are named, directly or indirectly, for feelings: the thriller, the
“weepy,” romance or horror films. The movie theater can be understood as a
place where emotions are shared. For instance, we can feel irritated by or
happy for a film character together.12
As the Scottish philosopher Adam Smith already formulated it in 1759,
shared emotions point to the moral values upon which a society has agreed;
one knows what is good and causes joy and one knows what is bad and causes
outrage.13 In other words, moral sentiments are culturally contingent and
therefore historical.
We — the audience, the actors, the filmmakers — learn, for example, when
we should feel ashamed, when it is suitable to be proud, or why in fact we
have a right to be angry. And we learn how emotions can be translated into
body language. In this respect, one could say that in a shared cultural context,
there exists a rehearsed physical visualization of emotions and, linked to it, a
readability of the corresponding body language. Thus, one can speak of a culturally constructed knowledge of emotions and their portrayal, their expression. An analytical view of actors’ body language in particular allows one to
11 On this issue, see Vinzenz Hediger, “Gefühlte Distanz. Zur Modellierung von Emotion
in der Film- und Medientheorie,” in Die Massen bewegen. Medien und Emotionen in der
Moderne, ed. Frank Bösch and Manuel Borutta (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag,
2006), 42–62.
12 On emotion and film genre, compare, for instance, Hermann Kappelhoff, “Tränenseligkeit. Das sentimentale Genießen und das melodramatische Kino,” in Das Gefühl der
Gefühle. Zum Kinomelodram, ed. Margrit Fröhlich, Klaus Gronenborn, and Karsten
Visarius (Marburg: Schüren Verlag, 2008), 35–58. For a fundamental discussion of emotions, film genre, and audience, see, for instance, Murray Smith, Engaging Characters:
Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).
13 Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (London: Millar, 1759). On the theory of
moral sentiments, see also especially the contemporary philosopher Ernst Tugendhat,
Vorlesungen über Ethik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1994).
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draw conclusions about the emotions and the values bound up with them,
which a film puts up for debate at a given time.14 If we follow the trajectory of
feelings that a film produces for our eyes and ears and that are fundamental
to its ability to tell its story, then we also find the moral concepts that the film
wants to share with the viewers.15
The question of the place of Jews in German society is ultimately also always a question about the moral order that this society declares as valid for itself at a given time. Thick descriptions of the plots and microanalyses of those
scenes central to my inquiry in the two television crime film episodes form
the basis of my analysis, in order to uncover the visually, acoustically, and
dramaturgically formulated conceptions of Jews and German society.
3. The Plots
The Tatort episode Der Schächter [“The Slaughterer”] begins with a scene of a
game of boules on the banks of Lake Constance and visually introduces the
film’s two central protagonists, Klara Blum and Jakob Leeb. Jakob Leeb wears
a black kippah, has thinning hair, a slightly stooped body, and speaks German
with an accent. Not often, but time and time again, his language is punctured
by Yiddish words and vocabulary, such as “Nu.” Visually and acoustically,
Jakob Leeb is identifiable as a Jew. He is a shokhet, a kosher slaughterer, by
trade. He works in Strasbourg and spends his days off in Constance in a large
mansion on the banks of Lake Constance. Klara Blum, the detective chief inspector, speaks German homogeneously in regard to dialect and pace and has
sovereign control over her body.
The summery idyll on Lake Constance — playing boules — is interrupted
by a possible murder case: tourists have reported to the police that they saw
the corpse of a boy on the Rodammers’ campgrounds. The witnesses have already departed, however, and the corpse is nowhere to be found.
14 On the historical dimension of staging feelings, see, for example, Erika Fischer-Lichte,
“Theater als ‘Emotionsmaschine’: Zur Aufführung von Gefühlen,” in Koordinaten der
Leidenschaft. Kulturelle Aufführungen von Gefühlen, ed. Clemens Risi and Jens Roselt
(Berlin: Theater der Zeit, 2009), 22–50; Johannes Riis, “Acting,” in The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film, ed. Paisley Livingston and Carl Platinga (New York: Routledge, 2009), 3–11.
15 On the link between emotions and visual language, as discussed in film studies, see
Hediger, “Gefühlte Distanz,” 42–62. On the link between emotion, film, and political values — with a theoretical model based on the work of Carl Schmitt and Chantal
Mouffe, rather than Adam Smith and Ernst Tugendhat, however — see also Sabine Hake,
Screen Nazis: Cinema, History and Democracy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
2012), 3–31.
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It is finally discovered in the garden of Jakob Leeb’s mansion. The boy’s
throat was cut with a knife. For the Constance prosecutor, Christian Bux, it
is obvious that Leeb, as a Jew and a shokhet, must have committed the crime:
Bux is convinced that he is on the track of a ritual murder. Klara Blum finally
discovers the real perpetrator: Edgar Rodammer. In a state of panic, Edgar
killed the boy with a knife, when the boy threatened him physically in order
to gain possession of the campgrounds’ cash box. Wolfgang Rodammer tried
to hide his brother’s deed and deposited the corpse and the murder weapon
on Jakob Leeb’s property.
Thus, for Fred Breinersdorfer and Jobst Oetzmann, scriptwriter and director of this Tatort, the real antisemitic ritual murder affair of 1891 in Xanten
was the point of inspiration and departure for the plot — albeit not in order to
tell an antisemitic story, but, as Oetzmann elaborates, to enlighten the viewer
about antisemitism. But the points of inspiration and departure for Mario
Giordano and Andreas Kleinert, scriptwriter and director, respectively, of
Schimanski, lie elsewhere entirely: in the Jewish quarter of Antwerp and in
numbered bank accounts in Switzerland, or rather in their conceptions of the
Jewish quarter and Swiss numbered accounts.16
By coincidence, Schimanski meets David Rosenfeldt in Antwerp. Rosenfeldt
is portrayed by the same actor who played Jakob Leeb in the Tatort episode
Der Schächter — by Nikolaus Paryla. Rosenfeldt, too, speaks German with
Yiddish interjections, his hair is thinning, his gait is unsure, and he wears a
black kippah. He carries a notebook filled with handwritten text in Hebrew
letters. Rosenfeldt wants this book to be brought to safety. Shortly thereafter,
he is murdered, and Schimanski tries to solve the case on his own. He visits a rabbi in Antwerp who was Rosenfeldt’s friend. Rabbi Ginsburg enlightens Schimanski about the notebook: it contains the encrypted information
for accounts in Swiss banks, accounts opened by Austrian Jews in order to
safeguard their money from the Nazis. Rosenfeldt and Ginsburg survived the
concentration camp Mauthausen, together with their friend Ari Goldmann.
Goldmann received the notebook in the concentration camp from his dying father. After the war, the three friends used the money from Switzerland
to support Jewish institutions. None of the original account holders survived
the Nazi era. State security in Duisburg, which is in charge of this murder
case, claims that Rosenfeldt and Goldmann were involved in criminal politi-
16 On the Xanten ritual murder case, see Johannes T. Groß, Ritualmordbeschuldigungen gegen Juden im Deutschen Kaiserreich (1871–1914) (Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 2002). On the
debate about the bank accounts in Swiss banks of Jewish victims of the NS -system, see
Thomas Maissen, Verweigerte Erinnerung. Nachrichtenlose Vermögen und die Schweizer Weltkriegsdebatte 1989–2004 (Zürich: Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 2005). On
Oetzmann, see www.jobst-oetzmann.de.
91
cal dealings. Finally, Schimanski convicts the head of Duisburg state security,
the detective superintendent König, of all people, of the murder. König was
deeply in debt and hoped to be able to return his finances to good order with
the help of the notebook.
The Holocaust in the Background
What feelings are linked with the characters marked as “Jewish” in these
films? How are the motives that lead the campground owner to try to have a
Jew sent to prison and the head of state security to kill a Jew explained and
connected to feelings? And what kind of dramaturgical function regarding
emotions do Blum and Schimanski take on?
Leeb and Rosenfeldt are presented in the film as physically weak Jews. Both
are religious and survivors of the Holocaust. It remains unclear, where — in
what city and in what country — each feels at home. From the perspective
of their diegetic environment — the portrayed world of the film — as well as
from that of the audience, both possess unusual property, or in the case of
Rosenfeldt, literally carry it with them: Rosenfeldt owns the controversial
notebook, which is encoded and can only be deciphered by a rabbi, and Leeb
lives in a huge, multistory mansion in prime location. Only in the course of
the episode does it become clear that the house, his possession of which cannot be explained simply by his occupation, is in fact an inheritance. This inheritance refers to his family, which lived in Constance until 1942 and was
then deported. And it is on this property that the corpse of the Christian boy
is discovered. Ultimately, each biography, that of Leeb and that of Rosenfeldt,
circles around the Holocaust inescapably, in the present and in the past. It is
precisely against this backdrop — of Holocaust, murder, observant Jews — that
the emotions, which the two films suggest to their audiences, develop.
4. Tatort, Constance, and Moral Sentiments
Jakob Leeb lives in seclusion in his mansion on Lake Constance. Klara Blum,
on the other hand, is completely integrated in Constance. The detective chief
inspector is on the familiar you — Du — basis with most of the inhabitants of
the city with whom she interacts — an exception, however, is state prosecutor
Christian Bux. But as a rule, tight networks of relationships, which in some
cases have an intimate character, link the people of Constance. Blum had a brief
affair some time ago, for instance, with the entrepreneur Wolfgang Rodammer.
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These networks between the inhabitants of the town create commitments and
desires. Thus, Wolfgang Rodammer denounces Leeb to Blum as a loner who
does not even attend the synagogue of the local Jewish community. This statement expresses a social categorization and a social conduct of the “Jew” — Leeb
does not belong to us, and Leeb isolates himself from us — , and moreover, it is
an expression of jealousy. In the pitch and choice of words with which he denounces Leeb, Wolfgang Rodammer insinuates that Blum has an erotic interest in Leeb. Blum’s body language in relation to Leeb does not belie this, in particular while salsa dancing. “Well, if you don’t lead, then how should I dance
with you? — Ok, then I’ll lead!”, Blum says during an evening rendezvous in
Leeb’s big garden and takes him carefully by the hand and the hip. The stereo
in Leeb’s garden booms beautiful salsa music, and the two of them sway gently to the beat, elegantly feeling their way along physical and emotional boundaries, tenderly circled by the camera.
Yet Blum’s predilection for Leeb reveals not only a physical, erotic interest
but also a socio-political concern and a moral dimension bound up with it.
Blum’s feelings for Leeb are shaped precisely by the fact that Leeb is Jewish. To
what extent the filmic ascription of “Jewish” refers, for Blum, to Leeb’s body
(and so is part of the eroticism), to his history (as a Holocaust survivor), to his
way of living (he observes the Shabbat and serves her gefilte fish), or to a combination of many things remains open. Leeb responds only very hesitatingly
to Blum’s physical advances.
In the film’s last scene, Blum nevertheless speaks of a “we.” Leeb is released
from custody late in the evening, since the real perpetrator has been convicted thanks to Blum’s criminological abilities and her conviction that Leeb
is innocent. Early the next morning, Leeb packs his suitcases. He wants to
leave and sell the house. Blum, who visits him very early in the morning, says,
“Jakob, we won,” invoking this fact as an argument against his plan to leave
Constance. How is this “we” constituted for the detective chief inspector?
Firstly, this “we” includes a reproach, as becomes apparent from Leeb’s
physical reaction. Leeb can barely look Blum in the eye. Her argument clearly
makes him uncomfortable. When Leeb, weighed down with luggage, nevertheless opens the front door, it is smeared with red paint — an antisemitic act
that refers to his occupation and the accusation of ritual murder. Leeb walks
on wordlessly. Blum remains behind and says, in absolute shock, “I’m sorry,”
and then, entirely composed and very determined, “In the decisive moments
of my life, I never ran away.” As he continues walking, Leeb answers: “Neither
did I.” Then he pauses, looks into the camera and turns around. He walks up
the stairs to the front door, past Blum. Yet his last line of dialogue is: “Are you
coming, Klara?” Already standing in the apartment, he invites Blum in with
an outstretched hand, hugs her as she enters — and closes the door. Leeb stays
in Constance with Blum.
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Fig. 1: Film still Der Schächter (© Foto: SWR)
What Blum reproaches Leeb for is being ungrateful and abandoning her in
her fight against antisemitism. One could perhaps also speak of a betrayal
of their friendship or of cowardice. Secondly, with “we,” Blum constitutes a
political action group against antisemitism, which is exposed to the danger of disintegration by — of all people — the victim. Her reformulation of the
reproach, in her sentence “In the decisive moments of my life, I never ran
away” — makes the Jew — the victim — see reason, or so one could interpret
this exchange as well. She successfully admonishes him to behave in a morally
correct way, not to be cowardly, for instance. In this scene, Blum’s erotic interest in Leeb is translated into a political one, which is very welcome (to take
action against antisemitism) but implies moral rules, which Blum explicitly
urges upon Leeb. At the end of the episode, it is once again the “Jew” who has
to be exhorted to correct moral behavior.
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How does this episode structure Bux’s and Rodammer’s relationships to
Leeb, and what feelings underpin and shape these relationships? The film
stages Bux as a prosecutor pursuing career success, who needs a spectacular case in order to distinguish himself. In addition, as one may deduce from
the prosecutor’s lines of dialogue, he comes from an antisemitic family. Ambition is one motivation; antisemitic convictions and, bound up with them,
the good feeling that his father was right another reason why Bux wants to
charge Leeb with the murder at all costs. No matter how Leeb behaves in the
criminal investigation, Bux construes everything against him on principle.
But the viewer knows from the beginning that Leeb cannot be the perpetrator (though at the same time, the viewer does not know who the perpetrator
is). Thus — and this is obvious to the viewer — Bux’s ambition and antisemitic
convictions lead him down a wrong path. Moreover, he is depicted as a character who acts brutally, in an overwrought and morally condemnable fashion,
in every situation. In this sense, from the viewer’s perspective, all of Bux’s actions and statements are morally at least questionable.
Wolfgang Rodammer presents himself to the audience in a more ambivalent way. At the beginning, he is simply jealous of Leeb. This emotional setting
is complicated by his brother Edgar’s deed. At the end, it is revealed that Wolfgang Rodammer acted as he did because he wanted to protect his brother. But
Wolfgang Rodammer’s actions were most certainly based on an understanding of antisemitic fantasies. And he relied on the discretion of his network of
people in Constance, among whom it is common knowledge that on several
occasions, his brother Edgar had already cut dogs’ throats, at least, during fits
of panic.
Unlike Bux, not all of the motivations underlying the campground owner’s
actions are morally questionable as a matter of course. It is not morally condemnable to want to protect one’s brother. Jealousy may not be a virtue,
but it is an understandable feeling. The moral ambivalence in Wolfgang
Rodammer’s actions becomes apparent in the scene at the end in which the
case is criminologically solved: Blum reacts to Rodammer’s confession with
anger and outrage — albeit without precisely articulating, firstly, in what system of values Rodammer thinks when he makes use of antisemitic fantasies,
of all things, to protect his brother, and, secondly, what it means for the system of values of the Constance network that Blum could only break open its
secrecy by chance. At least regarding the latter issue one can say: loyalty towards members of the network is more important for the people of Constance
than is breaking open antisemitic structures of thought — a radical statement,
but one that ultimately comes to nothing in the episode.
It appears that the director of the Tatort episode “The Slaughterer” wants
to enlighten the audience about antisemitism, but the staging of the central Jewish character corresponds nonetheless at least in part to antisemitic
95
conceptions. One also confronts, on the one hand, an antisemite who will
hardly meet with approval and, on the other hand, a campground owner, who,
though he acts in an antisemitic fashion by staging a ritual murder legend, in
so doing follows emotions that the viewer would not necessarily condemn: he
wants to help his brother. And in Blum, we encounter a detective chief inspector who helps the “Jew” but also makes him understand clearly what his moral
obligations are.
5.
Schimanski, Numbered Bank Accounts,
and Moral Sentiments
The Schimanski episode Das Geheimnis des Golem [“The Secret of the Golem”]
also stages feelings, images of Jews, and antisemitism. At the center of the
plot, there stand an object — the notebook — and Schimanski. The latter finds
himself mixed up in the confusing story of the Swiss numbered bank accounts because by chance he helps a Jew, Rosenfeldt, who is lying prostrate
on the ground, being threatened by a stranger. In the course of the episode,
Schimanski has to deal with various Jewish characters in order to solve the
case. As a rule, these characters are older, male, religious, and ugly. A beautiful young woman named Lea Kaminski is the obvious exception. At the end
of the episode, it is revealed — to Schimanski as well as to the audience — that
she is the daughter of Ari Goldmann, the man who received the notebook from
his father in the concentration camp.
The episode establishes this contrasting physical and aesthetic setting from
the very beginning. Schimanski steers into the harbor of Antwerp. The film
crosscuts to Rosenfeldt’s arrival in the same city. If Schimanski bares his muscular upper arms in a tight T-shirt as he stands upright at the helm of his boat,
then Rosenfeldt, wearing a badly-fitting suit, nervously deboards a train and
hurries off with unsure steps, his body slightly stooped — to the Jewish cemetery and then to the synagogue to Rabbi Ginsburg. While the synagogue appears to be a respectable building from the outside, it is dilapidated inside.
The rabbi’s office is located in the basement. There are long, torn paper scrolls
with partly huge Hebraic letters hanging on the walls, which are dirty and
crumbling, and the light is broken. This room is the first Jewish space — apart
from the Jewish cemetery — with which the viewer is confronted. What the
paper scrolls mean and why they hang here remain mysteries, as does why the
rabbi lives in a dilapidated synagogue. But perhaps it is precisely in the enigmatic that there lies the essence of what the film presents as Jewish.
Unlike in the Tatort episode, in the Schimanski episode the audience has
no advance knowledge of possible or impossible perpetrations, and so, from
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the viewer’s perspective, the enigmatically Jewish is linked to the mystery of
Rosenfeldt’s murderer and the secret of the notebook. How these links evoke
feelings of attraction or repulsion is a complicated question.
The male Jewish characters are not attractive, and their interests and motivations are far from transparent — to either the viewer or Schimanski. Rosenfeldt, it emerges after his death, was a decent man after all, and his friend the
rabbi trusts Schimanski and helps him with the investigation. Their bodies and their spaces may be enigmatic and perhaps repulsive, but they do not
act against Schimanski. And conversely, the engaging Schimanski tells antisemitic jokes, which are immediately recognizable and can be downgraded
right away, but he wants to help these enigmatic Jews.
The Schimanski episode’s scriptwriter and director play with the enigmatic.
König, for instance, who reveals himself as Schimanski’s and Rosenfeldt’s
opponent at the end, tells Schimanski the story of a radical conspiracy that
threatens the peace, in order to convince him to hand over the notebook: He
claims that Rosenfeldt was actually an Israeli secret agent, involved in a secret weapons trade with Islamic extremists transacted in Germany. With
his narration, König appeals — albeit in vain — to Schimanski’s honor as a
policeman and to conceptions of order and justice bound up with it. Moreover, König’s story presupposes an understanding of antisemitism as well as
the conviction that antisemitic fantasies have a persuasive power; visually,
Rosenfeldt and Ginsburg correspond to antisemitic fantasies. Lea Kaminski
tries — also in vain — to finagle the notebook from Schimanski with the
promise of seduction. She does not reveal her true identity, and — representatively for the writer and director of the film — she bets on the popular European tale of Christian men’s physical desire for mysterious, beautiful Jewish women. While König’s fantasies stand for threatening and
repellent ideas about Jews and Judaism, Kaminski plays with threatening
but nevertheless desirable, erotically charged fantasies about Jewish women
and Judaism.17
In the course of the episode, all desires direct themselves toward Schimanski; he now possesses the notebook. With the exception of König, the
feelings toward him are positive. Conversely, his feelings towards Ginsburg and before that towards Rosenfeldt are ambivalent: shaped, on the one
hand, by antisemitic rejection — according to Schimanski, Jews are inscrutable because they are Jewish — and, on the other hand, by the desire to help
the weak — Rosenfeldt, lying on the ground. In his feelings, two classic, com-
17 On the figure of the beautiful female Jew, see Florian Krobb, Die schöne Jüdin. Jüdische
Frauengestalten in der deutschsprachigen Erzählliteratur vom 17. Jahrhundert bis zum
Ersten Weltkrieg (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1993).
97
Fig. 2: Film still Schimanski, Das Geheimnis des Golem (© Foto: WDR/Uwe Stratmann)
plementary conceptions about Jews reemerge: the conception of their power
and that of their physical inferiority.18 When Schimanski encounters Lea
Kaminski, this ambivalent emotional setting becomes erotically charged.
At the film’s end, Schimanski’s emotional setting receives a Jewish absolution: the moral okay of a Holocaust survivor’s daughter. Lea Kaminski bids
Schimanski farewell. Both go their own ways. Kaminski ruminates silently
about him: “In Judaism we have an expression for a person like you: You are a
just man.” She looks after him — Schimanski is still in the frame — and finally says, just as before so that he cannot hear her but the viewer can, “Take
care — Shalom.”
At the dramaturgical center of both episodes, we find triangular emotional
constellations with Blum, Leeb, and Wolfgang Rodammer as well as with
Schimanski, Kaminski, and Ginsburg as cornerstones. All of the characters
have sympathetic traits, and in their relationships, several desires, partially
in conflict with one another, intersect: namely desires oriented toward eros,
18 On the visual tradition of these concepts, see, for instance, Helmut Gold and Georg
Heuberger, eds., Abgestempelt: Judenfeindliche Postkarten; auf der Grundlage der Sammlung Wolfgang Haney. Eine Publikation der Museumsstiftung Post und Telekommunikation und des Jüdischen Museums Frankfurt (Heidelberg: Umschau Braus,
1999).
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Daniel Wildmann
friendship, Jews, and German and German-Jewish history.19 In Tatort, erotic
relationships and friendships are also always comments on contemporary societal debates. What is unique, in the context of the Tatort and the Schimanski
series, about the constellations of desire in our two episodes is their connection — in particular regarding the issue of eroticism — to the Judenpolitik [the
Nazi policy towards the Jews], and to fantasies about Jews and Judaism.20 It
is also significant that ultimately, the desires and fantasies of the German
much more than of the Jewish characters stand at the center of the triangular constellations.
6. Moral Sentiments and Pleasure
From a film-theoretical, historical perspective, emotions can be understood
as dispositions for actions, as the result of cognitively grasping situations relevant to actions in a certain historical and cultural context. Films can represent such emotions, but they can also create them. In film, emotions can be
assigned to three different dramaturgic and narrative levels: Firstly, as a fundamental part of the filmic story, that is, as a specific feeling displayed to the
audience, which shapes and holds together the narration, secondly, the emotions of and between the film characters, and thirdly, the emotions suggested
to the audience in relation to specific characters.21 It is the second and third
level in particular that interest us in our context.
The British film scholar Murray Smith argues that from the perspective
of the viewer, there are two movements: On the one hand, viewers can adopt
characters’ cognitive perspectives, thinking, for instance, “I understand why
X behaves in this way,” but, on the other hand, they can also agree with char19 On the literary tradition of the topic of eroticism between Jews and Christians in German culture, see Eva Lezzi, “Liebe ist meine Religion.” Eros und Ehe zwischen Juden und
Christen in der Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2013). Lea Wohl von
Haselberg provides an overview of the filmic tradition of the topic of Jews, Germans, and
eroticism in German film after 1945 in Und nach dem Holocaust? Jüdische Spielfiguren
im (west-)deutschen Film und Fernsehen nach 1945 (unpublished dissertation, University
of Hamburg, 2015), 125–132 and 286–314.
20 On Tatort and eroticisim, see Dennis Gräf and Hans Krah, Sex & Crime. Ein Streifzug
durch die “Sittengeschichte” des TATORT (Berlin: Bertz + Fischer, 2011). On National
Socialism in Tatort, see Christian Hißnauer, “‘Vergangenheitsbewältigung’ im Tatort?
NS -Bezüge in der ARD -Krimireihe,” Repositorium Mediengeschichte 7 (2014), 3–49.
21 On this issue, see Matthias Brütsch et al., eds., Kinogefühle. Emotionalität und Film (Marburg: Schüren Verlag, 2005); Anne Bartsch, Jens Eder, and Kathrin Fahlenbrach, eds.,
Audiovisuelle Emotionen. Emotionsdarstellungen und Emotionsvermittlung durch audiovisuelle Medienangebote (Köln: Halem, 2007).
99
acters’ motives and emotions — “I share X’s concerns.” Therefore, emotions
can be understood and shared.22 If emotions are understood as the result of a
cognitive performance, then one can also argue, as I explain above with reference to Adam Smith, that shared emotions point to shared values and thus
to morality.
In our two episodes, emotions and, bound up with them, morality are
present on three levels. Firstly, we confront an emotional and moral setting
that condemns antisemitism, in both the diegesis — the depicted world of the
film — and the clear intention that the viewer should adopt this position. It
is very difficult to find the prosecutor Bux sympathetic or to laugh at Schimanski’s jokes. Secondly, we encounter an emotional setting that oscillates
between approving and rejecting certain actions. This setting is part of the
diegesis and also a version suggested to the audience, for instance Wolfgang
Rodammer, the campgrounds owner, or, in an even more complex fashion, the detective superintendent König. König’s family breaks apart, and
he is deeply in debt. With the money from Switzerland, he wants to pay his
debts and bring his family back together. König does tell antisemitic stories,
and he does kill Rosenfeldt, but in the last action scene — at night at a freight
train station — , he dies a morally good death: walking erect, he shoots himself with his service weapon. His opponents do not arrest him and so also do
not initiate a trial, which would be humiliating for him; instead, they allow
him to judge himself. König is morally bad, but he dies “with his head held
high.” The visual and dramaturgic staging — the granting of suicide, the slowness with which König carries the act out, his posture, the camera, which is at
eye level with him – allows this act to appear as a heroic, justified, and therefore morally good death. While we clearly reject his criminal actions — or so
one could interpret the point of view suggested to the audience — we now also
feel a certain empathy for him. Thirdly, we find the episodes’ antisemitic morals in their visual and acoustic staging of the Jewish characters, in their language, their bodies, their clothing, and their spaces.23 Antisemitic, because it
is based on negative images of Jews and relays these images, not in an unbroken way but also not clearly contradicting them. Morals, because this staging
mobilizes emotions that the viewer in particular is supposed to understand
and share. Or, as the wish for the readability of the visual staging of Jewish
figures is justified in the press booklet for “The Secret of the Golem”: “Since
many Germans are guided by the idea that all Jewish men have long beards
22 See Smith, Engaging Characters, 142–227.
23 On this question, see also Matthias N. Lorenz, “Im Zwielicht. Filmische Inszenierung des
Antisemitismus: Schimanski und ‘Das Geheimnis des Golem,’” Juden.Bilder. Text + Kritik.
Zeitschrift für Literatur 9 (2008), 89–102.
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Daniel Wildmann
and sidelocks, wear hats and black caftans,”24 their portrayal thus orients itself on supposedly shared conceptions of observant Jews.
Does the complex visual and acoustic narrative about Jews and Judaism in
these two episodes also suggest correspondingly conflicting moral feelings? If
one follows the television reviews of the large German daily newspapers, then
the ambiguities and contradictions discussed here can be linked without conflict. Bringing together these ambiguities is not perceived as a problem; it even
seems to have a liberating effect. The Süddeutsche Zeitung called the Constance Tatort “poetic.” The Berliner Zeitung wrote about the Schimanski episode that this is “how one can produce a crime show dealing with Jews and
money in a casual and relaxed way.”25
Why is a crime film with a fanatical antisemite, a pale, financially welloff Jew, and a German female detective chief inspector who likes to eat gefilte
fish “poetic”? Perhaps the following explanation helps: Blum and Schimanski
are not only a detective chief inspector and a private investigator, respectively,
who solve crimes; they are also good Germans: they help two pale observant
Jews in possession of fortunes — despite all prejudices, be it their own or those
of others.
But would it not also be possible to interpret the figure of the good German
entirely differently? One might also say, after all, that this figure enables the
viewer to see antisemitic imaginations in these two films without bad feelings:
supporting rich, pale observant Jews with hunched bodies is morally good.
Or, to put it another way: the figure of the good German enables us to enjoy
antisemitic imaginations with a good conscience — “Take care — Shalom.”
Filmography
Tatort – “Der Schächter” (The Slaughterer)
Director: Jobst Oetzmann; Teleplay: Fred Breinersdorfer; Camera: Immo Rentz; Editing:
Roswitha Gnädig; with: Eva Mattes (Klara Blum), Nikolaus Paryla (Jakob Leeb), Hannes
Hellmann (Christian Bux), Ulrich Bähnk (Edgar Rodammer), Felix von Manteuffel
(Wolfgang Rodammer), et al. Premiere: Sunday, 7 December 2003, 8:15 PM , ARD.
Schimanski – “Das Geheimnis des Golem” (The Secret of the Golem)
Director: Andreas Kleinert; Teleplay: Mario Giordano; Camera: Johann Feindt; Editing:
Gisela Zinck; with: Götz George (Schimanski), Nikolaus Paryla (David Rosenfeldt), Otto
Tausig (Rabbi Ginsburg), Martin Feifel (König), et al. Premiere: Sunday, 11 January 2004,
8:15 PM , ARD.
24 WDR Köln Pressestelle, ed., Schimanski – Das Geheimnis des Golem (Köln, 2003), 21.
25 Eva Marz, “Mord im Paradies,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, 6 December 2013, 18; Björn Wirth,
“Die Vorzüge der Beschneidung,” Berliner Zeitung, 10 and 11 January 2014, 16.
101
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Halem, 2007.
Bendix, Regina, Christine Hämmerling, Kaspar Maase, and Mirjam Nast. “Lesen, Sehen,
Hängenbleiben. Zur Integration serieller Narrative im Alltag ihrer Nutzerinnen und
Nutzer.” In Populäre Serialität: Narration – Evolution – Distinktion. Zum seriellen Erzählen seit dem 19. Jahrhundert, edited by Frank Kelleter, 293–319. Bielefeld: transcript
Verlag, 2012.
Brück, Ingrid, Andrea Guder, Reinhold Viehoff, and Karin Wehn. Der Deutsche Fernsehkrimi. Eine Programm- und Produktionsgeschichte von den Anfängen bis heute. StuttgartWeimar: Metzler, 2003.
Brütsch, Matthias, Vinzenz Hediger, Ursula von Keitz, Alexandra Schneider, and Margrit
Thöler, eds. Kinogefühle. Emotionalität und Film. Marburg: Schüren Verlag, 2005.
Buhl, Hendrik. Tatort. Gesellschaftspolitische Themen in der Krimireihe. München: UVK
Verlagsgesellschaft, 2013.
Fischer-Lichte, Erika. “Theater als ‘Emotionsmaschine’: Zur Aufführung von Gefühlen.” In
Koordinaten der Leidenschaft. Kulturelle Aufführungen von Gefühlen, edited by Clemens
Risi and Jens Roselt, 22–50. Berlin: Theater der Zeit, 2009.
Gold, Helmut and Georg Heuberger, eds. Abgestempelt: Judenfeindliche Postkarten; auf der
Grundlage der Sammlung Wolfgang Haney. Eine Publikation der Museumstiftung Post und
Telekommunikation und des Jüdischen Museums Frankfurt. Heidelberg: Umschau Braus,
1999.
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Groß, Johannes T. Ritualmordbeschuldigungen gegen Juden im Deutschen Kaiserreich
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Lezzi, Eva. “Liebe ist meine Religion.” Eros und Ehe zwischen Juden und Christen in der
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und ‘Das Geheimnis des Golem.’” Juden.Bilder. Text + Kritik. Zeitschrift für Literatur 9
(2008): 89–102.
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www.jobst-oetzmann.de
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Abstract
Visuelle Sprache ist zentral für antisemitische Erzählungen. Aber wie formulieren visuelle Quellen antisemitische Erzählungen und was macht diese Erzählungen attraktiv? Oder in anderen Worten: Wie verbinden sich diese Bilder
mit Gefühlen und moralischen Normen? Dieser Text diskutiert diese Fragen
am Beispiel zweier Folgen der populären Krimi-Serien Tatort und Schimanski:
»Der Schächter« (Tatort, December 2003, ARD) und »Das Geheimnis des
Golem« (Schimanski, January 2004, ARD).
Dr. Daniel Wildmann is a historian and film scholar. He is the Director of the Leo
Baeck Institute London and Senior Lecturer in History at Queen Mary, University
of London. His research areas are modern German-Jewish history, the history of the
103
Third Reich, the history of the body, masculinities, film and emotion. His major publications include Begehrte Körper. Konstruktion und Inszenierung des arischen Männerkörpers im Dritten Reich [Desired Bodies. Design and Staging of the Aryan Male
Body in the Third Reich], Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann, 1998; Der veränderbare Körper. Jüdische Turner, Männlichkeit und das Wiedergewinnen von Geschichte
in Deutschland um 1900 [The Changeable Body. Jewish Gymnasts, Masculinity and
the Reacquiring of History in Germany around 1900], Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 2009.
Daniel Wildmann is currently working on a new project entitled “A History of Visual
Expressions of Anti-Semitism, Emotions and Morality.”
Evelyn Alsultany
Arabs and Muslims in the U. S.-American
Media Before and After 9/11
Representations of Arabs and Muslims in the U. S.-American media have
changed in response to major political events and the U. S.’s relations to events
in the Middle East, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Iran Hostage
Crisis, and September 11, 2001. One thing that has remained consistent, however, is the way in which Arab and Muslim identities are conflated in U. S.American government and media discourses, as well as in popular culture. All
too often, representations of Arabs and Muslims have served to racialize Arab
ethnicity and vilify the religion of Islam. Since Arabs and Muslims are usually
represented as one and the same, it is difficult to write about representations
of Muslims without also addressing representations of Arabs, and vice versa.
Why are these categories taken to be interchangeable when only an estimated fifteen to twenty percent of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims is Arab?
This particular conflation enables a specific kind of racial othering that an
Arab/Christian, Arab/Jew, or Indonesian/Muslim conflation would not. The
result is damaging to our understanding of Arabs and Muslims because it obscures the enormous variety within the world’s Muslim population by projecting an image of Arab Muslims as of one very particular type: fanatical,
misogynistic, and anti-American. This recurring conflation, which has been
advanced by U. S.-American government and media discourses, both historically and in the long aftermath of 9/11, constructs an evil other that can be
easily mobilized, with powerful consequences during times of war. The Arab/
Muslim conflation has been strategically useful in American empire building during the War on Terror precisely because it is connected to a longer and
powerful history. It draws on centuries-old Orientalist narratives of patriarchal societies and oppressed women, of Muslim fundamentalism and antisemitism, and of irrational violence and suicide bombings. It, in turn, makes
possible the portrayal of the U. S. as the inverse of everything that is “Arab/
Muslim:” the United States is thus democratic and its citizens all equal, culturally diverse and civilized, home to progressive men and liberated women,
and violent only when attacked or protecting democracy.
Historically, this conflated Arab/Islamic culture has generally been portrayed as primitive and barbaric compared to European and North American
Arabs and Muslims in the U. S.-American Media Before and After 9/11
105
culture, which has been portrayed as civilized and enlightened. However, after 9/11 there has been a shift away from the more blatant stereotypes of the
past towards sympathetic portrayals of Arabs and Muslims, usually in the
form of a patriotic Arab or Muslim American. This essay examines representations of Arabs and Muslims in the U. S.-American media after the events of
September 11, 2001 that led to a shift from one-dimensional terrorist characters to the introduction of sympathetic characters alongside more complex
terrorist characters. It historically contextualizes this shift by summarizing
the changes in earlier representations of Arab and Muslim men from romantic sheikhs to rich oil sheiks to terrorists and Arab and Muslim women from
sultry belly dancers and harem girls to oppressed, veiled women. By considering the portrayal of Arabs and Muslims in Hollywood films, television, and
the commercial news media in the United States, this essay charts some of the
ways in which these representations have changed over time and some of the
ways in which they continue to perpetuate stereotypes.
Representations of Arabs and Muslims in
the U. S.-American Media before September 11, 2001
Early silent films that represented the Middle East, such as Fatima (1897),
The Sheik (1921), and The Thief of Baghdad (1924), portrayed the region as far
away, exotic, and magical; a place of Biblical stories and fairy tales; a desert
filled with genies, flying carpets, mummies, belly dancers, harem girls, and
rich men living in opulent palaces (or equally opulent tents). This trend continued into the eras of sound and Technicolor, as can be seen in films such as
Arabian Nights (1942), Road to Morocco (1942), and Harum Scarum (1965),
to name but a few. In Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, Jack
G. Shaheen documents nearly one thousand Hollywood films and their representations of Arabs and Muslims. He describes the “fictional Arabia” projected by Hollywood in the 1920s–1960s as consisting of deserts, camels, scimitars, palaces, veiled women, belly dancers, concubines held hostage, slave
markets, and Arab men who want to rape white women.1 Made while parts of
the Middle East were still colonies of European powers, the films of this period reflect, not surprisingly, colonial fantasies and the logic of colonialism.2 It
was not unusual for both “good” and “bad” Arabs to be represented and for a
1 Jack G. Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People (Northampton: Olive
Branch Press, 2001), 8.
2 Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media
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Evelyn Alsultany
white man to save the day by saving the “good” Arabs from the “bad,” freeing
the female Arab slaves from their captors, and rescuing white women from
Arab rapists.
The year 1945 was an important historical moment. It marked the start
of the decline of European colonialism, the beginning of the Cold War, the
recognition of the Holocaust that led to the creation of Israel (in 1948), and
the beginning of the emergence of the United States as a global power. As
the United States began its geopolitical ascendancy, representations of the
“foreign” contributed to the making of American national identity. And the
projection of exotic and erotic fantasies onto the Middle East began to be replaced by more ominous representations of violence and terrorism.3 Representations of conflated Arabs/Muslims as terrorists emerged with the inauguration of the state of Israel in 1948 and proliferated with the subsequent
Arab-Israeli war, Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories in 1967, and the
resulting formation of Palestinian resistance movements.4
From the late 1940s to the 1980s, old images of Arab men as romantic and
dangerous sheikhs were replaced by new images of billionaires who threaten
the economy of the U. S. and dangerous terrorists who threaten its national
security.5 These images, Shaheen writes, “regularly link the Islamic faith
with male supremacy, holy war, and acts of terror, depicting Arab Muslims
as hostile alien intruders, as lecherous, oily sheikhs intent on using nuclear
weapons.”6 As for Arab women, before World War II they were portrayed as
alluring harem girls and belly dancers.7 After the war, images of Arab women
largely disappeared from popular culture (e.g., Lawrence of Arabia, 1962), but
in the 1970s they reemerged as sexy but deadly terrorists (e.g., Black Sunday,
1977), and in the 1980s they became veiled and oppressed. The film Not
Without My Daughter (1991) best exemplifies the image of Arab and Muslim
women as veiled and oppressed. It is about an American Christian woman
who visits Iran with her Iranian Muslim husband who, under the influence of
Iran’s repressive culture, ends up holding her hostage. However, many films
set in the Middle East, for example Protocol (1984) and Indiana Jones (1989),
portray Arab and Muslim women dressed in black abayas to show that they
are submissive. After the 1990–91 Gulf War, Arab women once again became
invisible in the U. S.-American media. As Therese Saliba points out, Arab
women were either simply not represented at all or shown in ways that, par3 Brian T. Edwards, Morocco Bound: Disorienting America’s Maghreb, from Casablanca to
the Marrakech Express (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005).
4 Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs, 28–29.
5 Ibid., 21.
6 Ibid., 9.
7 Amira Jamarkani, Imagining Arab Womanhood: The Cultural Mythology of Veils, Harems,
and Belly Dancers in the U. S. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
107
adoxically, served only to accentuate their invisibility and therefore support
“neocolonial interests of the new world order and the U. S. media’s repression
of the war’s destruction.”8
As for primetime television, Jamie Farr on M. A. S. H. (1972–1983) and
Hans Conried on The Danny Thomas Show (1953–1971) played the only
consistently non-stereotypical Arab American characters in the history of
U. S.-American television (until more recently, as I will discuss at the end
of this essay). Farr, who is Lebanese American, played the Lebanese American Corporal Maxwell Klinger on M. A. S. H., a sitcom about American army
surgeons during the Korean War. Klinger seeks to be discharged from the
army and therefore cross-dresses to pretend that he is mentally ill and unfit to serve in the military. Conried, who was of Austrian Jewish descent,
played the Lebanese Uncle Tonoose on the sitcom The Danny Thomas Show.
Arab American actors, such as Kathy Najimy, F. Murray Abraham, and Tony
Shalhoub, appear on television and in film but rarely in the roles of Arab
American characters. Representations on television are similar to those in
film and other forms of popular culture. In The TV Arab (1984), Shaheen examines children’s cartoons, police dramas, and comedy shows on U. S.-American television from 1975 to 1984, identifying depictions of Arabs as billionaires, bombers, and belly dancers. He writes, “Television tends to perpetuate
four basic myths about Arabs: they are all fabulously wealthy; they are barbaric and uncultured; they are sex maniacs with a penchant for white slavery;
and they revel in acts of terrorism.”9 Sexualizing is a common characteristic of racialization, that is, of producing the racial other. Sander Gilman
has written about how a crucial feature of antisemitism has been portraying
Jews as existing in an earlier stage of psychological development, i. e., as embodying a chaotic, degenerate, or pathological sexuality.10 Similarly, Arabs
and Muslims have been commonly portrayed both as hyper-sexual and as
sexually repressed, signifying a sexuality that is either animalistic or unfree
and, either way uncivilized.
The significant shift in the 1970s towards portraying Arabs and Muslims
as terrorists is evident not only in Hollywood filmmaking and TV shows but
also in the U. S.-American corporate news media. Melani McAlister argues in
Epic Encounters (2001) that Americans’ earlier association of the Middle East
with the Christian Holy Land or Arab oil wealth shifted to one with Muslim
terror because of news reporting on the Munich Olympics (1972), the Arab oil
8 Therese Saliba, “Military Presences and Absences: Arab Women and the Persian Gulf
War,” in Seeing through the Media: The Persian Gulf War, eds. Susan Jeffords and Lauren
Rabinovitz (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994), 126.
9 Jack G. Shaheen, The TV Arab (Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular
Press, 1984), 4.
10 Sander Gilman, The Jew’s Body (New York: Routledge, 1991), 138.
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Evelyn Alsultany
embargo (1973), the Iran Hostage Crisis (1979–1980), and airplane hijackings
in the 1970s and 1980s. Between 1968 and 1976, Palestinians and their sympathizers conducted twenty-nine hijackings, which became a central part of
the news cycle in the U. S.11 The news media played a crucial role in making
the Middle East, and the Islamic countries there in particular, meaningful to
Americans as a place that breeds terrorism.
The Iran Hostage Crisis was a key moment in the conflation of Arab,
Muslim, and Middle Eastern identities. Though Iran is not an Arab country, during the Hostage Crisis it stood in for Arabs as well as symbolizing the
Middle East, Islam, and terrorism — all of which came to be referred to interchangeably. Edward Said’s examination of how the news media reported the
Iran Hostage Crisis demonstrates case after case of biased portrayals of Islam:
“During the past few years, especially since events in Iran caught European
and American attention so strongly, the media have therefore covered Islam:
they have portrayed it, characterized it, analyzed it, given instant courses
on it, and consequently they have made it ‘known.’”12 In the U. S., “knowing
Islam” came to mean knowing about fundamentalism and terrorism. The
monolithic portrayal of Islam as threatening reduces a diverse and dynamic
religion, with its many followers and their varied experiences, to something
unknown and unknowable.
The U. S.-American mass media, and Hollywood films in particular, have
contributed to racializing Arabs and Muslims. Shaheen examines Hollywood’s creation of an Arab phenotype, a distinct look or appearance, over the
last century. The on-screen Arab has dark features (skin, hair, and eyes), a distinctive hooked nose, “exotic” clothing (a veil, a belly dancing outfit, keffiyeh,
etc.), and conforms to a limited number of cultural tropes (greedy, rich, corrupt oil sheik; fanatic with violent religious beliefs; terrorist; etc.).13 Ella Shohat
demonstrates that Arabs have been racialized via the visual representations,
troping, and narrative positioning of Eurocentric narratives.14 Historically,
casting for TV dramas has contributed to this racialization. Through their
casting, TV dramas participate in the construction of the phenotype and
the fiction of an Arab or Muslim race and hence the notion that Arabs and
Muslims can be racially profiled. In Sleeper Cell, the lead terrorist is an Arab
Muslim but portrayed by an Israeli Jewish actor, Oded Fehr, who has played
Arab characters before, most notably in The Mummy films (1999 and 2001).
11 Melani McAlister, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and US Interests in the Middle East,
1945–2000 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 182.
12 Edward Said, Covering Islam (New York: Vintage, Revised Edition, 1997).
13 Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs.
14 Ella Shohat, “Gender and the Culture of Empire: Toward a Feminist Ethnography of the
Cinema,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 13, no. 1–3 (1991), 45–84.
109
In season two of the television show 24, Francesco Quinn, who is Mexican
American, plays the Arab terrorist. (His father, Anthony Quinn, also often
played Arab characters.) In reality, of course, Arab and Muslim looks span
the “racial” spectrum and cannot be reduced to one type. The ironic result
of its racializing is that the U. S.-American media have produced a conflated
Arab/Muslim look that is both narrow enough to mark Arabs for exclusion
and discrimination yet also inclusive enough erroneously to include Indians,
Pakistanis, and Iranians — as evidenced by misdirected hate crimes during the
Gulf War and after 9/11. My point here is not that only Arabs should portray
Arab characters but, rather, that casting contributes to the construction of a
visual image of an Arab/Muslim “race” that facilitates the conflation of Arab
and Muslim identities. This construction of an Arab/Muslim look in turn supports (whether intentionally or not) policies like racial profiling by doing the
ideological work of matching certain looks with certain categories of people
deemed threatening and dangerous.
This brief history of the emergence of the Arab terrorist character in the
U. S.-American commercial media reveals the decades-long history through
which they have primed viewers to equate Arabs and Muslims first with dissoluteness, patriarchy, and misogyny and then with terrorism. Regarding
the overall impact of such representations, Tim Jon Semmerling argues in
‘Evil’ Arabs in American Popular Film (2006) that portrayals of Arabs in U. S.American cinema reveal more about American Orientalist fears than about
actual Arabs.15 In Home/Land/Security: What We Learn about Arab Communities from Action-Adventure Films (2008), Karin Gwinn Wilkins describes
the focus groups she conducted in order to determine how Americans perceive Arab villains in action-adventure films and, more generally, their perceptions of Arabs as threats to U. S.-American national security, of the Middle
East, and of U. S.-American heroes who defeat the Arab threat.16 She reveals
an indisputable link between media representations and their consequences,
which are lived out in terms of discriminatory perceptions and practices.
Wilkins demonstrates that narratives of terrorism in the U. S.-American media structure viewers’ perceptions of terrorism during the War on Terror
which in turn support the implementation of policies that have dire consequences for Arab and Muslim life. Domestic policies, such as the USA PATRIOT Act, have led to the detention and deportation of thousands of Arabs
and Muslims without due process and foreign policies, such as military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, that have led to the deaths of over a hundred
15 Tim Jon Semmerling, ‘Evil’ Arabs in American Popular Film (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 2006).
16 Karin Gwinn Wilkins, Home/Land/Security: What We learn about Arab Communities
from Action-Adventure Films (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2008).
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Evelyn Alsultany
thousand civilians. Such representations and the policies they inadvertently
or not support are taken to justify the ongoing discrimination against Arab
and Muslims communities in the U. S. and other countries.
Representations of Arabs and Muslims in
the U. S.-American Media after September 11, 2001
In 2004, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) accused the TV
drama 24 of perpetuating stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims.17 CAIR objected
to the persistent portrayal of Arabs and Muslims in the context of terrorism,
stating “repeated association of acts of terrorism with Islam will only serve to
increase anti-Muslim prejudice.”18 CAIR’s critics and defenders of 24 retorted
that programs like 24 are cutting-edge and pertain to one of the most pressing
social and political issues of the moment, the War on Terror, and that CAIR
was trying to obscure the reality of Muslim terrorism by confining television
writers to politically correct themes.19
24 immediately responded to CAIR with two actions. First, it broadcasted a public service announcement (PSA) in February of 2005 during one
of the program’s commercial breaks. It featured the show’s lead actor, Kiefer
Sutherland, who plays Jack Bauer, a counter-terrorism agent who saves the
United States from terrorist attacks by breaking all of the protocols, including
torturing terrorist suspects. In the PSA, Sutherland stares, deadpan, into the
camera as he reminds viewers that “the American Muslim community stands
firmly beside their fellow Americans in denouncing and resisting all forms of
terrorism” and urges viewers to “please bear that in mind” while watching the
program.20 Second, a scene was written into one episode in which two patriotic Arab American brothers tell Jack Bauer that they want to help him fight
terrorists.
24’s efforts to offset the impact of their own stereotyping are not unique
but, rather, are part of a larger trend that came out of the multicultural movement of the 1980s and 1990s. The movement, which conservatives dubbed
“political correctness,” raised awareness of persistent stereotypes and Eurocentrism in the media and educational curricula. Many media critics have
17 “Fox TV Accused of Stereotyping American Muslims,” Free Republic, 13 January 2005,
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1320357/posts.
18 “24 Under Fire From Muslim Groups,” BBC News, 19 January 2007, http://news.bbc.co.uk/
2/hi/entertainment/6280315.stm.
19 Critics of CAIR include www.jihadwatch.org and www.frontpagemag.com.
20 This public service announcement (PSA) was broadcast during one of the program’s
commercial breaks on Monday, 7 February 2005, FOX .
111
pointed out the ways in which the multicultural movement has been coopted
and its political impact diffused; nonetheless, it has led to more diverse portrayals of historically marginalized and stereotyped groups.
My book, Arabs and Muslims in the Media (2012), was inspired by my surprise at finding an increase in positive portrayals of Arabs and Muslims after
9/11. More specifically, what I found was a trend in television shows and films:
if there is a focus on terrorism perpetrated by Arabs or Muslims, then to diffuse the stereotype the production team includes a positive Arab or Muslim
character, usually a patriotic U. S.-American citizen or an innocent victim
of a hate crime.21 We can see this trend in current television dramas, such as
Homeland and Tyrant, and in recent films, such as Argo.
How should we understand this seemingly positive development? In order to see why this trend should seem puzzling, it’s necessary to recall that in
the weeks, months, and years after 9/11 hate crimes, workplace discrimination, cases of prejudice, and airline discrimination against Arabs and Muslims increased exponentially. According to the FBI, hate crimes against Arabs
and Muslims increased 1,600 percent from 2000 to 2001.22 Dozens of airline
passengers thought to be Arab or Muslim were removed from flights. Hundreds of Arab and Muslim Americans reported discrimination at work, receiving hate mail, physical assaults, and vandalism or arson of their property,
mosques, and community centers.23 According to a 2006 USA Today/Gallup
poll, nearly one-quarter of those Americans polled, 22 %, said they would
not want a Muslim as a neighbor.24 And the U. S.-American government
passed legislation that targeted Arabs and Muslims (both inside and outside
the United States) and suspended constitutional rights. And yet, at the same
time, there was a proliferation of sympathetic portrayals of Arab and Muslim
Americans on U. S.-American commercial television.
How do such sympathetic representations interact with each other and
with negative representations to affect the complex field of Arab and Muslim
21 Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race and Representation after 9/11
(New York: New York University Press, 2012).
22 FBI, “Hate Crimes Statistics Report,” (2001), http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/hatecrime/2001 (accessed 20 May 2015).
23 American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, “Report on Hate Crimes and Discrimination against Arab Americans: The Post-September 11 Backlash,” (Washington, DC:
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee Research Institute, 2003), www.adc.
org/hatecrimes/pdf/2003_report_web.pdf (accessed 20 May 2015). Also see Council on
American-Islamic Relations, “The Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States
2002: Stereotypes and Civil Liberties,” Civil Rights Report (2002), http://www.cair.com/
CivilRights/CivilRightsReports/2002Report.aspx (accessed 9 May 2011).
24 “Anti-Muslim sentiment fairly commonplace,” Gallup Poll News Service, 10 August 2006,
http://www.gallup.com/poll/24073/antimuslim-sentiments-fairly-commonplace.aspx.
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Evelyn Alsultany
representations during the War on Terror? I call this phenomenon of inserting a positive representation to defuse a negative one “simplified complex
representation.” These are strategies that television producers, writers, and
directors use to give the impression of a complex representation, but only
in the most superficial and simplified way. These are predictable strategies
whose employment can be expected if a plot involves an Arab or Muslim terrorist, and they constitute a new standard compliment to the stock Arab villain introduced in the 1980s. If the storyline of a TV drama or film includes
an Arab or Muslim terrorist, then a “positive” representation of an Arab, Muslim, Arab American, or Muslim American is typically included also, as if to
counteract or subvert the stereotype of the conflated Arab/Muslim terrorist.
I argue that simplified complex representations signify a new era of racial representations; they are a characteristic representational mode of the alleged
“post-race era.” These “positive” representations often challenge or complicate
the negative stereotypes they accompany, yet they also contribute to the illusion of a “post-race” society. As a result, such “positive” imagery of Arabs and
Muslims can, ironically, seem to justify discrimination, mistreatment, and
war against Arabs and Muslims.
The “positive” representations of Arabs and Muslims in the first half
of the 20th century — the romantic sheikhs, sultry belly dancers, and harem girls — show that the positive post-9/11 representations to which I have
pointed are not new, in one sense, for supposedly “positive” images have been
around a long time. Still, they are new in another sense, that is, what distinguishes the earlier images from those in the beginning of the 21st century that
the former were not produced to offset “negative” stereotyping. Rather, those
“good” Arabs were undeveloped characters whose purpose was to be rescued
by white men in order that white masculine heroism be portrayed. In contrast,
recent representations of the “good” Arab or Muslim are attempts to lessen
the impact of their accompanying negative stereotypes.
The early images represent Arabs and Muslims as exotic, something the
Eurocentric imagination could more easily consume.25 But, though their pleasurable exoticism made them “positive,” these characters were nonetheless
standardized, one-dimensional reductions, that is, stereotypes. Moreover, at
times, the same stereotypical exoticism made such characters ambivalent. In
other words, images of Arabs and Muslims, whether alluring and pleasurable
or threatening and repulsive, have long advanced stereotypes.
There are many forms of simplified complex representation, four of which
I will outline here. First, the most common form is the patriotic Arab or Muslim American character who assists the U. S.-American government in its
25 Shohat, “Culture of Empire.”
113
fight against terrorism, either as a government agent or a civilian. Included
among such characters are Nadia Yassir, a dedicated member of the Counter
Terrorist Unit in season six of 24 and, more recently, Fara Sherazi, a CIA analyst who wears the hijab in season three of Homeland. The strategy behind
such characters is to challenge the notion that Arabs and Muslims in the U. S.
can’t have an American self-identity. Judging from the number of these patriots, it appears that writers have embraced this form as the most direct method
for counteracting potential charges of stereotyping.
Second, it has become increasingly common to portray Arab and Muslim
Americans as the unjust targets of hate, as victims of violence and harassment,
so that the viewer can sympathize with their plight. This new victimization
and sympathy are particularly significant given long-standing representations that have inspired unsympathetic attitudes and even a feeling of celebration when Arab or Muslim characters are killed. However, even the most
sympathetic representations of Arab or Muslim victims can be taken to justify exclusion. For example, in an episode of the television legal drama The
Practice an airline seeks to bar Arabs/Muslims from flying on their airplanes
in the name of safety and security.26 An Arab American man sues the airline
for discrimination. It is clear that the man, a university professor, is the target
of discrimination, but a preliminary hearing is held to determine whether or
not the profiling of Arabs and Muslims after 9/11 can be justified. After hearing arguments for and against such discrimination, the judge remorsefully
concludes that racism is wrong except during exceptional times of crisis. So,
though this episode intends to demonstrate sympathy for Arab and Muslim
Americans after 9/11 and repeatedly states that discrimination is unjust, its
message ultimately veers to the other end of the ideological spectrum. Thus,
sympathetic representations of Arabs and Muslims after 9/11 can participate
in an attempt to justify the suspension of Arabs’ and Muslims’ civil rights by
being part of the argument that 9/11 is an exceptional moment of crisis and
therefore requires exceptional measures.
Third, TV dramas have employed a host of devices to offset “negative” stereotyping, including “flipping the enemy” and fictionalizing their country.
Flipping the enemy involves misleading the viewer into believing that Muslims are plotting to attack the U. S. and then revealing that they are merely
pawns of or a front for Euro-American or European terrorists. The identity of
the enemy is thus flipped: viewers discover that the terrorist is not an Arab or
Muslim, or they find that the real threat is a larger network of international
terrorists. In season two of 24, the hero spends the first half of the season
tracking down a Middle Eastern terrorist cell, ultimately subverting a nuclear
26 “Bad to Worse,” The Practice, ABC , Season 7, Episode 8, 1 December 2002.
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Evelyn Alsultany
attack. In the second half of the season, viewers discover that European and
Euro-American businessmen are behind the plot and had intended to goad
the U. S. into declaring war in the Middle East so that they could benefit from
the subsequent increase in oil prices. This form challenges the idea that terrorism is an Arab or Muslim monopoly.
Fourth, it has become increasingly common in television dramas for the
terrorist characters’ country to go unnamed or be fictional. This form assumes that leaving the nationality of the villain unidentified eliminates
potential offensiveness: if no particular country or ethnicity is named, then
there is no reason for any particular group to be offended by the portrayal.
In season four of 24, the terrorist family is from an unnamed Middle Eastern
country. In season 3 of The West Wing, the fictional country of “Qumar” is the
source of terrorist plots; in season eight of 24, it is “Kamistan.” Most recently,
the television drama Tyrant is set in “Abuddin.” Fictionalizing the terrorist’s
country can provide more latitude for salacious storylines that might be criticized if they involved an actual country.
These four forms of simplified complex representations are intended to
give the impression that we have entered a “post-race era” in which we no longer tolerate racism and “negative” stereotyping. However, closer examination
of the ideological work done by these strategies reveals that they are often employed in narratives that try to justify depriving Arab and Muslim Americans
of their civil rights or reinforce the association of Arabs and Muslims with terrorism. Furthermore, the sorts of “good” Arab and “good” Muslim are limited to, for example, the patriotic American who is willing to fight and die to
protect the U. S. from terrorism and the victim of hate crimes. We have yet to
see a diverse array of Arab and Muslim characters in the media.
The Future of Representations
There have been “positive” and “negative” representations of Arabs and Muslims throughout the history of representations, and it is important to understand them in their historical context. We must move away from simple assessments of an image as “positive” or “negative” towards examining the
ideological work that images and storylines do, particularly how they tell reductive stories about Arabs and Muslims and can, when repeated over and
over again in various media, lead to prejudiced perceptions, opinions, and
policies that can have devastating effects on people’s lives.
Despite the shift away from the more blatant stereotypes of the last few decades, Arabs and Muslims are still primarily thought of in relation to terrorism. We must ask, then, how effective these strategies to minimize the effects
115
of negative stereotyping have been if they continue to be employed in stories
associating Arabs and Muslims with terrorism? Representations of Arabs and
Muslims in stories that have nothing to do with terrorism remain strikingly
unusual in the U. S.-American commercial media.
While these new representational strategies are certainly an improvement
over past blatantly “negative” stereotypes, they hardly herald the arrival of the
post-race future. They show that we must think beyond whether an image is
“good” or “bad” and ask instead how images can contribute to attempts to justify exclusion. So, what would real progress look like?
I do not think that there is anything inherently wrong with depicting Arabs and Muslims as terrorists. The issue is not whether Arabs should be
portrayed as terrorists but, rather, why they are rarely portrayed as anything
else. The way to reduce the effects of “negative” stereotypes and increase our
collective humanity is not simply to add a “positive” Arab or Muslim character to a story about Middle Eastern terrorists but to tell so many different
kinds of stories that the terrorist story becomes just one among them. Breaking “negative” stereotypes is not simply a matter of creating counteracting
“positive” images. The remedy is creating such a diverse range of images that
no one of them has the power to dominate our thinking about an entire group
of people.
There are some promising developments. The character Abed on the television show Community is Palestinian American (played by the Indian American actor Dani Pudi). He is a weird guy, socially awkward and obsessed with
popular culture, but these have nothing to do with his ethnicity or religion.
The character Mohammed (played by the Lebanese American actor Haaz
Sleiman) in season one of Nurse Jackie is another good example of an Arab
character who breaks the standard forms. Mohammed is a gay nurse who is
the leading character’s co-worker and best friend. We need more such characters on U. S.-American television who break the mold of “bad” terrorist Arabs and Muslims and “good” patriotic ones and who are just normally flawed
human beings. We also need more shows like the sitcom Little Mosque on the
Prairie, which was aired in Canada, about a Muslim community in a fictional
town. In order to compete with the ways of thinking about Arabs and Muslims that hundreds if not thousands of films and television shows have entrenched, it is necessary to produce alternative images and stories that offer
insight into the diversity of Arab and Muslim American life.
116
Evelyn Alsultany
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Abstract
Dieser Essay untersucht die Darstellung von Araber*innen und Muslim*innen
in den US -amerikanischen Medien nach den Anschlägen vom 11. September.
Seit Ende 2001 kann eine Verschiebung von einer eindimensionalen Darstellung von Terroristen hin zur Darstellung sympathisch wirkender Charaktere
zum einen und komplexere Bilder von Terroristen zum anderen verzeichnet
werden. Diesen Wandel stellt der Essay in einen historischen Kontext: Frühere
Darstellungsformen reichen vom arabischen und muslimischen Mann als romantischer Scheich zum reichen Ölscheich und schließlich zum Terroristen.
Die Darstellung arabischer und muslimischer Frauen veränderte sich ebenfalls;
das Bild der temperamentvollen Bauchtänzerin und des Haremsmädchens
wurde von dem der unterdrückten, verschleierten Frau abgelöst.
Evelyn Alsultany is an associate professor in the Department of American Culture
at the University of Michigan and Director of Arab and Muslim American Studies.
She is the author of Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race and Representation after
9/11 (2012). She is co-editor of Arab and Arab American Feminisms: Gender, Violence,
and Belonging (2011) and Between the Middle East and the Americas: The Cultural
Politics of Diaspora (2013). She is guest curator of the Arab American National Museum’s online exhibit, “Reclaiming Identity: Dismantling Arab Stereotypes,” which
can be viewed at http://arabstereotypes.org. For more information, see http://evelyn
alsultany.com.
Charlton McIlwain
Criminal Blackness
News Coverage of Black Male Victims
from Rodney King to Michael Brown
On 9 August 2014, Michael Brown — a young Black man walking the streets
of the St. Louis, Missouri, suburb of Ferguson — was shot and killed by a
White police officer, Darren Wilson. Brown’s body lay uncovered in the middle of the Ferguson housing project where he was shot for four hours before
the coroner’s office removed it. Wilson was never charged with a crime for
what many thought was an unjustified use of force by a police officer who escalated what should have been a routine stop — or no stop at all — to the point
where Brown was on the receiving end of deadly gunfire.
Several high profile incidents of Black men brutalized by police officers
preceded Michael Brown’s killing. In 1991, Los Angeles, California, resident
Rodney King was beaten almost to death by a group of police officers. The
beating, which occurred after police had chased King along a highway, is one
of the most famous incidents, given that it was seen by a national and international audience courtesy of an amateur video that was released to television news outlets. The acquittal of the accused police officers touched off the
Los Angeles riots of 1992. In 1999, New York City police officers sprayed the
apartment of the 23 year-old African immigrant Amadou Diallo with a hail
of 41 bullets, 19 of which struck him, because he “fit the description” of a
rapist on the loose in his Bronx neighborhood. While Diallo’s family was later
awarded a three million dollar settlement for wrongful death, the police officers involved in the incident were, again, acquitted.
The estimated number of Black victims killed at the hands of police before Michael Brown and in the two years since range from the high hundreds
into the thousands, depending on who’s keeping track.1 These incidents, and
probably many more that we will never know about because they haven’t been
covered by either local or national news media, have resulted in calls for law
1 See http://gawker.com/unarmed-people-of-color-killed-by-police-1999–2014–1666672349;
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/25/the-14-teens-killed-by-cops-since-mi
chael-brown.html; https://abagond.wordpress.com/2014/08/26/a-list-of-unarmed-blackskilled-by-police/; and http://killedbypolice.net/.
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enforcement to account for a clear pattern of Black men and women and boys
and girls falling prey to police misconduct. When asked what makes this pattern possible, many individuals — scholars and lay people, political elites and
grassroots activists, and people of color who feel especially vulnerable to
police violence — implicate the media in the historic devaluation of Black lives.
This brief essay is about the ways in which media have historically and continue to influence perceptions of Blackness through how they report on and
frame Blacks in the context of crime and criminal justice. This includes the
language, imagery, story positioning, and framing in the news media’s production of narratives about Blackness and criminality.
Something Different about Ferguson
I was a college junior in 1991, when Rodney King was beaten. I recall being glued
to my dormitory’s communal television set watching the video images of the
incident, which were accompanied by the color-coded news commentary that
pointed out the racial difference between King and the officers who continued
to kick, punch, and beat him with night sticks long after he had been effectively
subdued. Though the brutality of the incident was astonishing, I recall the persisting characterizations of King’s behavior as the wild acts of a drug addict and
violent criminal who had previously robbed a neighborhood convenient store.
King’s criminal narrative was etched in the minds of many, and a sense of suspicion about Blackness, given the widespread perception about Black criminal
tendencies, was confirmed by later news reports and commentaries on the reactions of South-Central Los Angeles residents to what many of them — Black
and White — considered to be the unjust acquittal of the accused officers.
A quarter of a century later, the news of Michael Brown’s killing reminded
me of Rodney King. But something was clearly different for me. I experienced
it differently, for one thing. I wasn’t glued to a television set, and even if I had
been I still wouldn’t have learned anything about Brown’s death during those
first few days after the shooting. In fact, I was on vacation, and what I knew
about the event came from a combination of the social medium and microblogging network Twitter and two of my graduate students, who had spontaneously decided to fly to Ferguson to observe and research what was taking
place in the days after Brown’s death. Monitoring their reports and the chatter on Twitter, which I check sporadically, I got a sense of what had transpired.
I knew it wasn’t the whole picture. Still, I sensed from the information that
I received, and how it characterized Michael Brown in relation to Darren
Wilson, the police officer who shot him, that something about this incident
was different from the one involving Rodney King. It wasn’t until about a
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month later, however, that I began sifting through the data — news reports
about the killing and the relentless protests that followed — in order to confirm my suspicions about the coverage. In these data, I found evidence to suggest that the news media covered Ferguson, and other more recent cases of
Black male victims of unjustified police violence, differently from Rodney
King and similar incidents in the 1990s and early 2000s.
I had been reading news headlines and making calculations as I prepared
analyses for several news outlets, as many media critics, activists, and politicians were criticizing the major news media for their delay in covering Ferguson and their seemingly myopic focus on the violence that had begun to erupt
as protestors vented their anger at Brown’s killing. As I sorted through the
data, one headline fragment stood out: “Unarmed Black Teenager.”
It stood out because it was repeated thousands of times in the headlines
and blog posts of local, national, and world news outlets alike. It was repeated
in the pages of outlets both large and small, aligned with both the political
left and the right. But this headline fragment characterizing Brown’s killing
stood out for me primarily because it struck me as being altogether different from past news representations, both recent and historical, of Black people in the United States. As I watched and listened to academics, media critics,
and activists criticize the ongoing news coverage, I became fascinated by the
novelty of seeing a Black man in such a circumstance being widely described
as a victim, rather than a criminal. I was struck by the fact, which motivated
my later investigations, that “all categories of news outlets described Michael
Brown not as an African American, or as a criminal, but as a teenager. This
represents Brown somewhat sympathetically, as someone who, because of his
youth, was vulnerable and did not deserve to die.”2
Media and Black Criminality
“Black” has been synonymous with criminality in the U. S. since emancipation, when Blacks were elevated to the status of full citizens. Representations
of Blacks as violent and criminal have been reinforced as each new medium for
news and public information has evolved: from the silent films that spawned
the historic film Birth of a Nation3 to political cartoons and print news
during Reconstruction and Jim Crow4 to the electronic media from radio to
2 http://academicminute.org/2015/01/charlton-mcilwain-nyu-journalistic-perspectives-onmichael-brown/.
3 http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_birth.html.
4 http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/brute/.
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the Internet. Historians of race and of media (particularly American film)
have chronicled the ways in which Black criminality was represented and reproduced in the composite images of the Black Brute, the Brutal Black Buck,
and several other stereotypes, which combined the tropes of Black criminality, lawlessness, superhuman strength, and animalistic sexual proclivities with
the fears of White women being raped by Black men, racial miscegenation, and
Black retribution, into an almost singular narrative, which became etched in
the minds of White America and beyond.5 Scholarly accounts are replete with
research noting the longstanding representation of Blacks as criminals in contemporary television6, and an avalanche of empirical work has consistently
demonstrated the degree to which Blacks are overrepresented in crime reports
in television and other news venues and the degree to which narratives of Black
crime and violence effectively incite fear and contribute to the disparate treatment that Blacks receive in the criminal justice system.7 Such portrayals and
associations of Blacks with crime extend to Black and Latino political candidates, public officials, and racialized public-policy debates as well.8 The Black
criminal image is as powerful in the White mind as it is enduring.
5 Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattos, Mammies and Bucks: An Interpretive History (Harrisberg: Continuum International Publishing Group (Sd), 1989).
6 Robert M. Entman and Andrew Rojecki, The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and
Race in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 28–29 and Mary B. Oliver,
“Portrayals of Crime, Race, and Aggression in ‘Reality-Based’ Police Shows: A Content
Analysis,” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 38, no. 2 (1994): 179–192.
7 Gregg Barak, ed., Media, Process, and the Social Construction of Crime: Studies in News
making Criminology (New York: Garland Publishing, 1995); Franklin D. Gilliam, Shanto
Iyengar, Adam Simon, and Oliver Wright, “Crime in Black and White: The Violent, Scary
World of Local News,” The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 1, no. 3 (1996):
6–23; Ted Chiricos, Sarah Esch holz, and Marc Gertz, “Crime, News and Fear of Crime: Toward an Identification of Audience Effects,” Social Problems 44, no. 3 (1997): 342–357; Jon
Hurwitz and Mark Peffley, “Public Perceptions of Race and Crime: The Role of Racial Stereotypes,” American Journal of Political Science 41, no. 2 (1997): 375–401; Travis Lemar
Dixon and Keith B. Maddox, “Skin Tone, Crime News, and Social Reality Judgments: Priming the Stereotype of the Dark and Dangerous Black Criminal,” Journal of Applied Social
Psychology 35, no. 8 (2005): 1555–1570; Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr. and Shanto Iyengar, “Prime
Suspects: The Influence of Local Television News on the Viewing Public,” American Journal of Political Science 1, no. 3 (2000): 560–573; Travis L. Dixon and Daniel Linz, “Race and
the Misrepresentation of Victimization on Local Television News,” Communication Research 27, no. 5 (2000): 547–573; and Travis Lemar Dixon and Daniel Linz, “Overrepresentation and Underrepresentation of African Americans and Latinos as Lawbreakers on Television News,” Journal of Communication 50, no. 2 (2000): 131–154.
8 Charlton McIlwain and Stephen M. Caliendo, Race Appeal: How Candidates Invoke Race
in U. S. Political Campaigns (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011), 11–45; Tali
Mendelberg, “Executing Hortons: Racial Crime in the 1988 Presidential Campaign,” Public Opinion Quarterly 61, no. 1 (1997): 134–157; Jon Hurwitz and Mark Peffley, “Playing
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Still Something Different About Ferguson
And, so, my mind went back some twenty years to the brutal beating of
Rodney King in Los Angeles and how, even in the face of such damning video
evidence, King was largely characterized as just another Black criminal high
on PCP or some other drug, violent, and threatening to the police officers who
apprehended him. Later, the news media focused narrowly on the violent aftermath of the trial in which the White police officers who beat Rodney King
were acquitted, rather than on the systemic, institutional conditions that led
to it. The coverage was overwhelmingly concerned with the protests, rioting,
and raging fires. In fact, a video of a Black resident pulling Reginald Denny, a
White truck driver who was driving through South-Central Los Angeles at
the time the verdict was announced, out of his truck seemed to circulate more
widely and draw more consternation from public officials and White America
in general than did the out-of-focus video of Rodney King’s ordeal.
Finally, as I reflected on the relatively novel type of headlines reporting
on Michael Brown’s case, I began to think that they were not the first of their
kind. As I recalled Trayvon Martin’s case in 2012 and Oscar Grant’s before
him, I asked myself, “Are things different now, not just with Michael Brown
but with the contemporary news coverage of incidents of Black injustice? Is
Black criminality still the dominant feature characterizing the Black image
in the American mind? Or, is the image changing? Or, are we witnessing the
expansion of the playing field on which competing images and narratives of
Blackness battle for supremacy? And, if it is the latter, then what will the consequences be?”
In the next few pages, I pose a series of questions that I will address and
present the data that speaks to them. I then say what I believe these data mean
not only in the context of how contemporary news media cover Blacks and
crime in general but, more specifically, in the context of what the media’s
coverage of Black crime victims means for citizens’ ability to fight for systemic change in a set of institutions that criminalize Blackness in a myriad
ways, e.g., through media representations, ubiquitous surveillance, policing
practice, and incarceration.
the Race Card in the Post–Willie Horton Era: The Impact of Racialized Code Words on
Support for Punitive Crime Policy,” Public Opinion Quarterly 69, no. 1 (2005): 99–112; and
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Dirty Politics: Deception, Distraction, and Democracy (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1993), 64–101.
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New Media?
I began my investigation by trying broadly to understand trends in news reporting about African Americans. I searched the LexisNexis database9 for stories in
which the keywords “African American,” “Black,” or “Black people” were used in
the headline or lead paragraph. I retrieved 82,259 stories after filtering for duplicate or mischaracterized articles. These stories, which came from U. S. national
newspapers, television, magazines, trade publications, and blogs, ran from 2000
to the end of 2013 and covered a variety of issues related to African Americans.
I first determined what proportion of the stories related to crime and violence.
I then focused on their content: Was it explicitly racialized? What types of
crimes were most frequently covered? How often did stories focus on the perpetrators of crime, how often on victims, and who received more coverage?
Given the historic and persistent connection between race and criminality,
one might expect that a large proportion of stories covering Black men and
women in the United States would concern criminal behavior in some way.
However, only roughly six percent of the stories, a little more than 4,000, focused on some aspect of criminality. Two factors account for this paucity of
crime coverage. One is that most research on media depictions of Blacks and
crime comes from state, rather than national, media. The other factor is that
my data did not include stories from the 1980’s (the LexisNexis database does
not extend back that far), when a kind of mass hysteria about Black crime permeated the country as drugs, poverty, gang activity, and other forms of underclass behavior, which were concentrated in urban areas such as Detroit,
Los Angeles, and New York City, threated to spill over into White suburbia.10
It’s worth mentioning that this kind of criminal Blackness, which erupted in
the late seventies and the eighties, characterizes much of the discourse about
Black and Brown people across the “Black Atlantic.”11
When we look at crime reporting from 2000 forward, we see a pattern
emerge. First, more than three-quarters of the stories are racialized in some
way. This means that race-related language occurs frequently in text other
than headlines and lead paragraphs. In the sample, this form of racialization positively correlates with story length, that is, more racialized stories are
9 LexisNexis is a searchable database of news media outlets which archives material beginning in the 1990s. For information, see http://www.lexisnexis.com/en-us/home.page.
10 Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda, “The American Drug Panic of the 1980s,” Moral
Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance 12 (1994): 205–223 and James E. Hawdon,
“The Role of Presidential Rhetoric in the Creation of a Moral Panic: Reagan, Bush, and
the War on Drugs,” Deviant Behavior 22, no. 5 (2001): 419–445.
11 Stuart Hall et al., Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
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longer (as measured by the numbers of words). This means that stories about
Blacks and crime draw readers’ attention by using racial references in their
headlines. Such references pervade the stories. We can assume that readers are
likely to make strong connections between Blacks and crime.
Second, when it comes to the focus of this coverage, the vast majority of
headlines cluster around three different but overlapping themes. The majority of crime-related headlines (41 %) focuses on the connection between Blacks
and law enforcement generally, with headlines containing subject terms such as
“law enforcement” (14 %), “investigation” (12 %), “police force” (9 %), and “corrections” (6 %). The second most frequent set of terms (32 %) refer to violent
crimes and criminal behavior: murders, shootings, homicides, robbery, and
domestic violence. Finally, terms in the third most frequent category (27 %)
have to do with Blacks as victims of gun violence or, more generally, as victimized by a system characterized as racist and unjust. (See figure 1.)
Broadly speaking, then, crime coverage of Blacks from 2000 to 2013 identifies them as either the perpetrators or the victims of crime. Interestingly, this
division doesn’t work out as one might expect it to. On the one hand, Black
crime victims account for the largest proportion of the coverage, more than
one-third, in terms of the number of stories. (One-third were neutral). Examples of victim-framed headlines are “Commission Finds Blacks Disproportionately Face Death Penalty,” “Woman Sues LAPD Over Husband’s Death:
Widow says Cop Shot him because he’s Black,” and “Race War Plan: Murder
102 Random Black People and Die Trying to Kill Obama.”
On the other hand, stories about Black perpetrators constitute only onequarter of the total number of stories. These stories have headlines such as
“OK to Kill a Cop, if its Coming from Radical Black Power Groups, Black
Panthers & Leftists; Government Under Pressure from Radicals to Drop
Charges” and “Is Black on Black Violence a Myth,” or “Black Male Serial Killer
Judge Removed from Case.”
In the final analysis, however, Black perpetrators, who are least represented
in terms of the number of stories, receive more coverage in the way that counts
most: the number of words in stories about them. So, while news media frequently report on the kinds of racial injustices that Black people face, e.g.,
wrongful incarceration, underrepresentation on juries, and overt racial discrimination that unfairly connects them to the criminal justice system, Black
perpetrators of crime actually receive the greatest amount of attention overall.
The mean number of words in stories about Black victims is 694 while for perpetrators it is 807, and story length is highly correlated with headlines about
perpetrators. (See figure 2.)
These results are consistent with popular images of Black criminality, the
criminality of Black men in particular. And they illustrate the ways in which
journalistic fixation on the drama, and the minutiae, of violent crime racializes
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Criminal Blackness
14%
Law Enforcement
Investigations
41%
12%
Police Forces
Corrections
9%
Total
6%
Murder
10%
Shootings
Homicide
9%
32%
Assault & Battery
Robbery
5%
Domestic Violence
3%
Bank Robbery
2%
Total
1% 1%
1%
3%
Police Misconduct
14%
27%
Race & Racism
Racism & Xenophobia
9%
Total
Fig. 1: Proportion of Keywords Used in Stories about Black Crime
Black criminals and makes both their violence and their blackness suspect
and threatening. But, what of Black victims? These stories about Blacks, who
are sometimes victimized by other Blacks but also by a system that institutionalizes white supremacy treat them as militarized targets marked for
incarceration or death by the state.
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Fig. 2: Word-Count Comparison between Stories about Black Crime
Victims and Black Perpetrators. © Charlton McIlwain
Black Victims: From Rodney King to Michael Brown
To consider more closely how news media typically cover Black victims, I
gathered a set of data on news reports about four prominent Black victims,
three of whom victims of White police officers. The first was Rodney King,
who, in 1991, was severely beaten by a gang of White officers of the Los Angeles Police Department. The second case is Oscar Grant who was shot by police
officers on a commuter train in Oakland, California, on New Year’s morning
in 2009. The third is Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager shot and killed by a
zealous neighborhood-watch captain in Sanford, Florida, in 2012. Finally,
there is the case of Michael Brown, the unarmed teenager shot and killed in
Ferguson, Missouri, by a White police officer, Darren Wilson, in 2014.
Again, I searched the LexisNexis database for stories on each of these four
cases across the same type of media outlets as previously. This yielded close to
15,000 stories: 1,759 stories about Rodney King, 450 stories for Oscar Grant,
7,050 for Trayvon Martin, and 4,452 for Michael Brown. Given that the number
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Racial (7403 units) 63%
Not Racial (4382 units) 37%
%
Not Racial
Trayvon Martin (6221)
%
%
Michael Brown (3525)
Rodney King (1632)
Oscar Grant (407)
Racial
%
%
%
%
%
%
%
Fig. 3: Proportion of Racialized Stories
of available news sources in the Lexis database doesn’t noticeably increase until after 2000, the King case differs from the other three in terms of the number of available stories, which makes it difficult to compare the relative volume of stories devoted to each, especially since stories about Rodney King
come from relatively few news outlets compared to stories about Martin or
Brown. Be that as it may, the approximately 15,000 stories that collectively
covered their deaths demonstrate the following.
First, the stories taken together show a clear pattern of racialization. That
is, the language used in reporting on these cases and the keyword tags associated with the stories were framed in racial terms. To conduct this part of the
analysis, I used software12 both to code and machine-classify stories on the
basis of a list of commonly racialized terms. The list included identity terms,
such as “black,” “African American,” and “people of color,” as well as such terms
as “racism,” “racial,” “skin color,” and the like.13 63 percent of all the stories
were racial, meaning that one or more words in a headline was a race-related
or race-associated term. Stories about Rodney King and Trayvon Martin had
the greatest proportion of racialized headlines; up to September of 2014, headlines of stories about Michael Brown were the least racially framed.
12 DiscoverText is a cloud based text-analytics software program which enables machine
coding of large numbers of short texts. Cf. http://discovertext.com/.
13 All machine-classified variables used an 80 % threshold for measuring reliability.
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But why is racialization important in this context? Why does the degree to
which news media frame stories about Black deaths at the hands of the state
or citizens acting on its behalf as racial matter? It is important, in news media in particular, because race is always part of the politics of signification, of
the contested terrain of framing what race means. It is also important because
many parties (e.g., activists, policy makers, institutions, etc.) have a stake in
how race is defined during these moments of rupture, protest, and when the
disgusting underbelly of systemic, state-created or state-sanctioned racial injustice is exposed and demands a response.
On 16 March 2012, 18 days after Trayvon Martin was shot and killed, the
New York Times’ columnist Charles Blow wrote a piece entitled “The Curious
Case of Trayvon Martin.” After recounting Martin’s mother’s story of how she
learned of her son’s death, Blow writes:
Trayvon’s lifeless body was taken away, tagged and held. Zimmerman was taken into
custody, questioned and released. Zimmerman said he was the one yelling for help.
He said that he acted in self-defense. The police say that they have found no evidence
to dispute Zimmerman’s claim.
He adds, almost as an aside: “One other point: Trayvon is black. Zimmerman
is not. Trayvon was buried on March 3. Zimmerman is still free and has not
been arrested or charged with a crime.”14
The purpose and consequence of racialization is demonstrated quite clearly
here. Several (though not many) news outlets and journalists had reported
on Martin’s death by this point. Blow’s article was among the first, if not the
first, to argue that this was not just another tragic accident or senseless confrontation that went horribly awry. When Blow mentioned that Martin and
Zimmerman were of different races, he implied that the event was fundamentally racial and that the tragedy was not just the death of a teenager but that
things always go this way in United States: Blacks are perpetually under suspicion, and law enforcement typically gives White’s the benefit of the doubt. In
the end, Black people are doomed to rest in peace while Whites enjoy peace as
well as life, liberty, and the right to continue to pursue their happiness.
Racializing police misconduct is significant because it argues that the misconduct is just a symptom of an underlying problem — racism. Thus the underlying racial problem must be dealt with. While this may seem obvious in an
opinion piece whose author clearly intends to persuade, racial framing works
the same way in texts, such as news headlines, not intended to persuade. In
such contexts, racial framing, whether implicit or explicit, intentional or unmotivated, influences how people think. Robert Entman makes this clear in
14 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/17/opinion/blow-the-curious-case-of-trayvon-martin.
html?_r=0.
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his characterization of framing: “Frames select some aspects of a perceived
reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way
as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral
evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described.”15
While racial framing is important for defining the situation, the timing
in which frames are presented is also important. The timing with which racially framed stories occurred in news reports about the two most comparable
cases — Martin and Brown — reveals a clear pattern. Figure 4 presents a timeline of the number of stories about these two cases that came out on each day.
The lines indicate whether stories were racially framed or not. In both cases,
we can see that racialized headlines appear in the initial stages of coverage
much more often than in latter stages. In the early reporting of both incidents, non-racial framing is the norm. But, for both cases, there are also periods during which the number of racial and non-racial stories is the same
or very close. While the contest over racial framing appears more protracted
in Trayvon Martin’s case, especially in comparison to Michael Brown’s, one
should remember that coverage of Martin’s killing did not begin in earnest
until roughly two weeks afterwards. (See figure 4.)
The difference in the number of racially framed and race-neutral stories
in Trayvon Martin’s case indicates that there was a concerted effort by activists to frame Martin’s death in fundamentally racial terms. But it also reflects an enduring storyline that journalists emphasized: a story about race
and racial injustice. On the one hand, activists have much to gain by framing Martin’s death (and other victims’ deaths) racially, for that allows them
to use it to show that racial injustice persists in the U. S. That, in turn, serves
both the rhetorical purpose and the justification for building a political movement aimed at ameliorating racial discrimination. On the other hand, journalists do not typically act as activists. That is, they do not actively seek to influence political agendas (at least not ideally). However, by framing stories
as racial, journalists justify continued research into and writing about the
racial dynamics of the stories they pursue and the contexts in which the incidents they cover take place. That is, racial framing provides an impetus for
journalists to further explore and bring to light other forms of racial injustice that permeate local communities and the nation. For example, racially
framing the Michael Brown incident provided a foundation for journalists
to explore how the municipal court system in Ferguson exploited poor, Black
residents. Such stories were not about Michael Brown per se, but journalists
were able to write about them, in part, because it related to the racial context
surrounding Brown’s case.
15 Robert M. Entman, “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm,” Journal of
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Fig. 4: Timing of Racial vs. Non-racial Stories in Two Cases. © Charlton McIlwain
Though I haven’t identified the various journalists, columnists, editorial
boards, and bloggers responsible for the stories I discuss here, one can imagine a kind of competition that takes place in the initial stages of reporting on
cases such as these. We know that a wide array of players compete not only
for space on the public agenda but also to influence how items on the agenda
are discussed. Journalists and activists, politicians and policymakers, and bureaucrats and lay ordinary citizens all have a stake in how we talk about such
high-profile incidents, which has an important bearing on the social, political, and economic decisions we make. In Martin’s and Brown’s stories, the
competition for frame positioning seems to have taken place early, and it also
might provide some criteria for measuring how we judge the success or failure of news coverage in terms of the public’s response to these and other sorts
of incidents. Two arguments could be made about how media coverage of
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Criminal Blackness
Michael Brown, and other recent incidents, differed from coverage of earlier
cases like Rodney King’s. First, journalists, headline writers, and editors chose
to frame these incidents racially. Second, journalists may have racially framed
these stories because they were influenced by public discourse in the first few
days following the incidents. That is, discussion about these cases, particularly on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook (which journalists
play close attention to), may have influenced journalists’ decisions to view and
frame these through a racial lens.
My argument for these claims is based on limited data, which cannot establish cause and effect. But other findings suggest that stories’ racial frames
may be the product of public influence in at least two ways. First, it is well
documented that talk about the deaths of both Trayvon Martin and Michael
Brown circulated on social media long before mainstream news outlets covered them. A widely circulated infographic by Pew Research16 compares the
amount of Twitter chatter to the number of minutes that network and cable news outlets gave to the stories. It shows that well in excess of half a million tweets circulated before network and cable news broadcasters aired even
one minute of coverage. My point about racialized framing, then, is, given
that journalists are embedded in Twitter and that Twitter functions predominantly as a network for disseminating news,17 it is reasonable to believe that
the volume of discussion on Twitter influenced the later reporting of network
and cable news outlets.
Second, the circulation of news about Brown’s death on social media, and
Twitter particularly, may not only have influenced the degree to which later
reports racially framed their accounts of the incident (at least in the beginning) but may also have accounted for the relatively favorable framing (favorable for those concerned with racial justice) of those accounts, a framing far
different from that of the reporting on Rodney King more than two decades
ago. As shown in Figure 5, the proportion of favorable headlines, which include those that describe the victims as such, and those that are neutral, far exceeds the proportion of those that are negative or unfavorable (e.g., that refer to
real or imagined, present or past criminality or blame the victims in some way
for what happened to them). In 1991, two-thirds of the news media’s stories
on Rodney King had frames that were unfavorable to King, despite the widespread circulation of the video showing the brutality of the incident. In stark
contrast, nearly 80 percent of stories about Martin’s and Grant’s deaths were
favorable or neutral, as were 54 percent of the early stories on Michael Brown.
16 http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/08/20/cable-twitter-picked-up-ferguson-storyat-a-similar-clip/.
17 Haewoon Kwak et al., “What is Twitter, a Social Network or a News Media?,” Proceedings
of the 19th International Conference on World Wide Web (New York: ACM , 2010), 1–10.
132
Charlton McIlwain
Favorable
Unfavorable
Trayvon Martin (
)
Rodney King (
)
Michael Brown (
)
Oscar Grant (
)
%
%
%
%
%
%
%
%
Favorable (492 units) 61%
Unfavorable (315 units) 39%
%
%
Fig. 5: Proportions of Favorable and Unfavorable Stories
133
Criminal Blackness
Conclusion: Is There Really Something Different
about Ferguson?
They say the more things change, the more they remain the same. This may
not apply to the current environment of news media and how, broadly speaking, they represent Blacks as crime victims. To be sure, Blacks have been and
are increasingly being shown to be victims of police misconduct; by some accounting, this phenomenon may now be worse than in previous decades. But
we can also be certain that the news-media environment has changed largely
because of new media technology, which has allowed the number of news
sources to balloon beyond the traditional outlets. Further, the social media’s
rapid and wide circulation of news and information has had its effects. The
fact that people in the U. S. and abroad first became aware of Trayvon Martin’s and Michael Brown’s cases through social media (rather than traditional
media outlets) attests to how much the media landscape has changed in ways
that allow ordinary citizens to have a greater influence on what the news media cover and how journalists frame those stories.
My purpose in this paper has not been to show that technology has revolutionized the news media in ways that have substantially changed reporting on
Black crime and Black victims of crime. That would be difficult to measure.
However, I have tried to demonstrate that such change is possible in our current media environment. The evidence I have presented here suggests that, because the media’s agenda provides multiple channels for citizens to influence
what gets covered and how, there are more opportunities to make sure that the
victimization of Blacks at the hands of the police becomes a salient issue to
national and local media. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that the current
technology of news dissemination makes it easier for these issues to be covered and allows those creating news content to produce increasingly more informed and complex reporting on such events.
There was something different about Ferguson, about Michael Brown,
Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and those on the long
list of Black victims who have followed in their tragic footsteps over just the
past year. We have new ways to learn about them and make their deaths a matter of public discussion. And we have new ways of making sure that the right
people, people who wield power in the news, public affairs, the government,
and the law as well as activists and ordinary citizens, make our more expansive system of information and news distribution work to the advantage of
those who seek racial justice.
134
Charlton McIlwain
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McIlwain, Charlton, and Stephen M. Caliendo. Race Appeal: How Candidates Invoke Race in
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135
Criminal Blackness
Abstract
Die Verknüpfung von Schwarzsein mit Gewalt und Kriminalität etablierte sich
in den Vereinigten Staaten unmittelbar, nachdem afrikanische Sklav*innen
in die Freiheit entlassen worden waren. Diese Zuschreibung, dass sie sich
gesetzeswidrig verhielten, verfolgt Schwarze im gleichen Maß, wie sich die
Medien technisch weiterentwickelten: vom Stummfilm und Zeichentrickfilm hin zur Zeitung und Zeitschrift, zur Bühne, zum Radio, Fernsehen und
zum Internet. Ich analysiere in diesem Text die Berichterstattung über Afroamerikaner*innen und Kriminalität in den Nachrichtenmedien sowie über
prominente Schwarze als Opfer rassistischer Gewalttaten von Weißen über
eine Dauer von zwei Jahrzehnten. Die Indizien legen nahe, dass es ein zählebiges Muster rassifizierter Berichterstattung gibt, das komplexer ist als möglicherweise zu erwarten war. Nichtsdestotrotz scheint dieses Geflecht der Berichterstattung über die Kriminalität von Schwarzen zu suggerieren, dass jene
unfähig seien, Widerstand zu leisten – entweder gegen ihre Verwicklung in
Gewalttaten oder gegen eine Veränderung ihrer gesellschaftlichen Position
als Opfer von Rassismus.
Dr. Charlton McIlwain is Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication
at New York University. He is an expert on racial discourse, media and racial politics,
and is the co-author of the recent award winning book: Race Appeal: How Candidates
Invoke Race in U. S. Political Campaigns. In addition to authoring/coauthoring four
additional books and close to thirty scholarly journal articles and chapters in edited
volumes, McIlwain regularly provides expert commentary for local, state, national
and international media.
Yasemin Shooman
Between Everyday Racism and
Conspiracy Theories
Islamophobia on the German-Language Internet
Before the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik committed his
attacks on 22 July 2011 in Oslo and on the island of Utøya, which left 77 people
dead, he uploaded a manifesto of more than 1,500 pages onto the Internet
and simultaneously sent it by email to more than 1,000 recipients. He thereby
spread his worldview, which was greatly marked by his hatred of Islam and
Muslims. The manifesto consists largely of extensive excerpts from internationally based anti-Muslim websites. Although Breivik’s terror attacks are
certainly an extreme case, it has been observed over the past few years that
the World Wide Web plays a significant role in disseminating the sort of antiMuslim thought that the perpetrator invoked.1 This also applies to mobilizing people in person, as the protest movement Patriotic Europeans against
the Islamization of the Occident, known by its German acronym PEGIDA
[Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West], which started in
Dresden in October 2014, demonstrates. The group recruited its supporters
primarily through social networks such as Facebook, and was able to put up
to 25,000 demonstrators in the street.2
Statements against Muslims ranging from the discriminatory to the openly
hateful have been expressed in diverse political milieus. On extreme right-wing
websites, such as that of the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD),
Muslims are attacked as the quintessence of the “other” and the epitome of the
“foreigner.” These extremists are to be distinguished from Islamophobic
groups who offer a different justification of their similar attitudes toward Muslims in Europe. In contrast to right-wing extremists, they take an explicitly
philosemitic and pro-American stance and pretend to approve of democracy
and human rights. My article focuses on such groups, which can be classified
1 See Liz Fekete, “The Muslim Conspiracy Theory and the Oslo Massacre,” Race & Class 53,
no. 3 (2012): 30–47.
2 See http://www.polizei.sachsen.de/de/MI_2015_33890.htm. Unless otherwise noted, all
websites were last accessed on 23 July 2015.
Between Everyday Racism and Conspiracy Theories
137
as right-wing populist. After introductory remarks on the characteristics of the
Internet as a medium of communication, I will discuss the ideological orientation of Islamophobic websites and their predominant argumentation strategies as well as main motifs and conclude with thoughts about their potential
to mobilize supporters beyond the web.
The Internet as a Medium of Communication
The World Wide Web has greatly changed global communications. Information can be spread more quickly and widely than ever before. Every user can
be active as both a recipient and a sender, which is why the Internet is considered a particularly grassroots means of communication. In weblogs and the
commentary and discussion forums of online newspapers, on video portals
such as YouTube, and in social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, users can publicly express their opinions on various subjects. At the same time,
the nonexistent or minimal control mechanisms, which are the result of the
anonymity of Internet communication and the lack of pressure to conform
to socially desirable norms foster a radicalization of discourses. The resulting freedom of communication explains the Internet’s attraction for individuals and groups who can therefore propagate extreme political views without fear of immediate sanctions. Also, the infrastructure of the Internet helps
groups to form in the first place by, on the one hand, linking like-minded
people into a virtual community and, on the other hand, mobilizing them
for joint activities. The Internet makes it possible for organizations to exchange information across local and national borders and thereby greatly facilitates their communications, which, in turn, strengthens marginal groups.3
Via the Internet, they can reach a much wider audience than would be possible otherwise. These communicational characteristics allow the Internet to
serve as a medium for circulating ideologies of exclusion. Under the heading
“cyberhate,” researchers analyze the virtual activities of these so-called “hate
groups” that popularize racist and antisemitic ideas.4
3 See Nicola Döring, Sozialpsychologie des Internet. Die Bedeutung des Internet für Kommunikationsprozesse, Identitäten, soziale Beziehungen und Gruppen, 2nd rev. ed. (Göttingen et al.: Hogrefe Verlag, 2003), 296.
4 See James Banks, “Regulating Hate Speech Online,” International Review of Law, Computers & Technology 24, no. 3 (2010): 233–239; Barbara Perry and Patrik Olsson, “Cyberhate:
The Globalization of Hate,” Information & Communications Technology Law 18, no. 2
(2009): 185–199; Brian Levin, “Cyberhate: A Legal and Historical Analysis of Extremists’
Use of Computer Networks in America,” American Behavioral Scientist 45, no. 6 (2002):
958–988.
138
Yasemin Shooman
Islamophobia as a Current Form of Racism in Europe
Among these hate groups’ websites (called “hate sites”) are anti-Muslim sites
that propagate discrimination against and exclusion of Muslim minorities
living in Western countries. In Europe, these minorities are made up predominantly of immigrants, and their descendants, who either emigrated
from former colonies, as in France and Britain, or came as migrant workers or refugees, as is largely the case in Germany. Analyses of racism show
that currently Muslims in Europe are racialized, i. e., construed as a natural
and homogeneous group with certain, usually negative, collective traits regarding their religious affiliation and (non-European) origins or descent.5
According to this construal, Muslims are a non-integrable minority, the
“other” within Europe. Anti-Muslim discourses serve both to stabilize a constructed national community and to invoke a supranational Western identity, which has gained significance in the course of European integration in
recent years. Though religion often serves as a framework for negotiating inclusion and exclusion, it is not only practicing Muslims who are subject to
exclusion. “The Islamic identity — in principle religious and therefore voluntary — becomes involuntary as soon as Muslims are racialized,” according to
the historian Fernando Bravo López.6 The sociologists Steve Garner and Saher Selod define “racialization” as “ascribing sets of characteristics viewed as
inherent to members of a group because of their physical or cultural traits…
The characteristics thus emerge as “racial” as an outcome of the process.”7
Expressions of current anti-Muslim sentiments reify religion and culture
in a similarly deterministic way to how race has been conceptualized. In the
aftermath of the Nazis’ crimes the concept of race has been tabooed across
Europe. Hence, racism draws on primarily cultural and no longer biological
arguments.8
A specific form of Islamophobia, which I conceptualize as ideologically
self-contained, is presently articulated first and foremost on the Internet.
One of its characteristics is to add conspiracy theories to racist depictions
of Muslims for instance by invoking an imminent Muslim domination and
5 See Nasar Meer and Tariq Modood, “The Racialisation of Muslims,” in Thinking Through
Islamophobia: Global Perspectives, ed. Salman Sayyid and Abdoolkarim Vakil (London:
Hurst Publishers, 2010), 69–83.
6 Fernando Bravo López, “Towards a definition of Islamophobia: Approximations of the
early twentieth century,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 34, no. 4 (2011): 58.
7 Steve Garner and Saher Selod, “The Racialization of Muslims: Empirical Studies of
Islamophobia,” Critical Sociology 41, no. 1 (2015): 12.
8 See David Theo Goldberg, Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1993), 71 f.
139
thus reversing actual power relations in Western societies. Watered-down
elements of this narrative can also be found in established discourse about
Islam and Muslims. This is shown by analyses of mainstream media including successful books, such as that of the former Senator of Finance in Berlin
and best-selling author, Thilo Sarrazin, a member of Germany’s Social Democratic Party. His book Deutschland schafft sich ab: Wie wir unser Land aufs
Spiel setzen [Germany Is Doing Away with Itself: How We Are Risking Our
Country] was published in 2010 and sold about 1.5 million copies. Sarrazin
intended it to be a wake-up call about Germany’s supposed cultural decline,
which he believes the disproportionately high fertility rate among Muslim
immigrants makes nearly certain. He claims that Muslims are less intelligent than white, Christian Germans, which makes them culturally inferior,
unproductive, and incapable of integration into German society. According
to Sarrazin, the cause of the decline is Germans’ abandonment of their national identity, as left-wing elites have demanded, in favor of an ostensible
multiculturalism. Other successful books, such as Londonistan: How Britain
Is Creating a Terror State Within (published in 2006) by the British journalist Melanie Phillips, and Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West (published in 2009) by the American journalist
Christopher Caldwell, though differently focused, pursue Sarrazin’s general line. These highlight the transnational dimension of the anti-Muslim
discourse.
Furthermore, Islamophobia, together with the rejection of the European
Union, has become the ideological core of European right-wing populism.
Merging concerns in relation to immigration with issues in relation to Islam, anti-Muslim agitation often replaces the old “Foreigners Out!” slogans,
as the statements of the Front National in France, the Austrian Freedom Party
(FPÖ), Belgium’s Vlaams Belang, the Danish People’s Party, the Sweden Democrats, and the Italian Lega Nord show. Their election results are now sometimes on a par with those of the traditional major parties.
International Networking of the Islamophobic
Internet Scene
The struggle against what such parties see as the decline of the Occident has
in recent years also been taken up by those involved in the Internet’s global Islamophobic scene. Among the most prominent websites in the United States
are Jihad Watch, which went online in 2003, and Atlas Shrugs, which has existed since 2005. Both have large European followings, and Anders Behring
Breivik extensively cited both in his manifesto. They are operated by the
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Yasemin Shooman
journalist-activists Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, who have close ties
with the Republican Tea Party Movement.9
One of the basic convictions of Islamophobic activists is that Islam is not a
religion but a political ideology. (They reject the distinction between Islam and Islamism as naïve.) This is the source of demands for restrictions
on the freedom of religion for Muslims. Islamophobes consider extreme Islamists, such as Al-Qaida and the so-called Islamic State (IS), to be the representatives of unvarnished, authentic Islam, in contrast to the supposedly only
ostensibly moderate majority of Muslims. Anti-Muslim activists thereby fail
to acknowledge that Muslims themselves make up the largest proportion of
these groups’ victims. Such activists allege that Muslim minorities in the West
are working to subvert the societies in which they live. They claim that Islam
commands Muslims to deceive in order to enforce their interests. And they
consider political and cultural elites to be “collaborators” in the Islamization
of Europe and the United States and, thus, part of the enemy. On her blog,
Pamela Geller commented on Breivik’s attack on the Workers’ Youth League
of Norway’s Social Democratic Labor Party as follows: “Breivik was targeting
the future leaders of the party responsible for flooding Norway with Muslims
who refuse to assimilate, who commit major violence against Norwegian natives, including violent gang rapes, with impunity, and who live on the dole…
all done without the consent of the Norwegians.”10 She thus took up Breivik’s
own perspective, for he wanted his attacks to be viewed as acts of self-defense
against traitors.
Pamela Geller gained prominence in 2010 through her leadership of the
protests against Park51, a mosque and Muslim community center that was to
be built in Lower Manhattan. Together with Robert Spencer and others, she
popularized the organization Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), which has
been classified as an anti-Muslim hate group by anti-discrimination organizations in the United States, such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the
Anti-Defamation League. SIOA last attracted attention in May 2015 with a
cartoon contest about the prophet Muhammad it held in Garland, Texas.
The Dutch right-wing populist Geert Wilders was invited to hold the keynote
speech. Two men who, according to newspaper reports, had previously announced their sympathies for the IS on the Internet, attempted to attack the
event but were shot by police.
A popular target of American Islamophobes is president Barack Obama,
whom they denounce as a secret Muslim and supporter of an Islamist conspiracy to infiltrate the United States, a theme that German anti-Muslim websites
9 See Nathan Lean, The Islamophobia Industry: How the Right Manufactures Fear of Muslims (London: Pluto Press, 2012).
10 http://pamelageller.com/2011/07/summer-camp-indoctrination-training-center.html.
141
have adopted. But, networking between American and European Islamophobic activists is not limited to ideological exchange. In January 2012, SIOA and
its European offshoot Stop Islamization of Europe (SIOE), which was founded
by Anders Gravers of Denmark, formed the umbrella organization Stop Islamization of Nations with Pamela Geller as its president and Robert Spencer
its vice-president. The organization’s Board of Advisors met in March 2012 in
Aarhus and in August 2012 in Stockholm for so-called “Counter-Jihad Movement” meetings. It hosted an International Freedom Defense Congress in
New York on 11 September 2012. Among the board members is Stefan Herre,
founder of the German blog Politically Incorrect.11
The German Blog Politically Incorrect
Politically Incorrect (PI), which began its activities in 2004, has become the
most popular and leading anti-Muslim website on the German-language Internet. According to its statistics, PI receives almost 120,000 visitors daily.12
As the name indicates, the site, whose editorial team and guest authors post
an average of ten articles per day, sees itself as a platform for “politically incorrect” news and a counter weight to the established media. The site’s writers
employ a simple technique: they scan the Internet for reports from all over the
world of objectionable actions by Muslims, or people they assume on the basis
of their names to be Muslims. In addition to violent events in the Middle East,
they focus especially on incidents in Germany and other Western European
countries, whose majority populations they depict as victims of their Muslim
minorities. This interpretation of social reality is based on a selective perception. That is to say, they look for confirmation of their existing convictions
and either ignore discrepancies, dismiss them as exceptions, or re-describe
them in the terms of their conspiracy theory.
The heart of the website is its readers’ comments, which range from a few
dozen to several hundred per article. Their number appears to substantiate
PI ’s claim to express “the voice of the people.” PI sees its most important task
in the struggle against the “Islamization of Europe.” At the same time, it explicitly presents itself as “pro-American” and “pro-Israel,” and it employs philosemitism in an effort to counter charges of racism and right-wing extremism. However, the site openly propagates racism not only against Muslims but
also against Sinti and Roma and Blacks.
11 See http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/01/international-freedom-organizations-unite-tocreate-stop-islamization-of-nations-sion.html.
12 As of July 2014. Since 2015 the website owners have stopped publicizing “hit” statistics.
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Yasemin Shooman
An Ideologically Self-Contained Islamophobic Worldview
A central theme of anti-Muslim websites is the fantasy of a conspiracy to subjugate and “Islamize” Europe. Bloggers reject mainstream political parties as
controlled from outside and ridicule liberal and leftist politicians in particular
as the puppets of Muslims. They accuse the media of deliberate misinforming in order to conceal the Islamization. They also claim that there is a taboo
against publically criticizing Islam and Muslims. According to PI ’s guidelines,
“the pro-Islamic self-censorship of our media is obvious proof that editorial
offices believe that ‘peaceful’ coexistence with Islam is only possible if we bow
to Islamic interests.”13 The notion that Muslim interests control media and
political discourses has certain parallels to antisemitic topoi.
PI has outlined a threatening scenario for the future of Europe:
“All of us see day by day how the growing power of Islamic interest groups and their
Western helpers already goes hand in hand with gradual restrictions that favor the
pro-Islamic reorganization of our society… The spread of Islam thus means that our
descendants — and probably we ourselves — … will in two or three decades have to live
in a largely Islam-dominated social order oriented around sharia and the Qur’an and
not anymore the constitution and human rights.”14
A blogger who contributes both to PI and his own website under the alias
“Michael Mannheimer,” and who has spoken at demonstrations of the PEGIDA
movement in Würzburg, even warns of a planned “genocide of the German
people.” “Intention and implementation — as far as the massive Islamization
of Germany and Europe are concerned — have already existed for decades.
The demographic proof is overwhelming… Away from the eyes of the public, secretly and quietly — and clearly against the will of European populations … — the most massive transfer of culture and populations in human history is taking place. It is intended and planned by the political elites and is
supported by industry. And it will turn Europe into a continent that we will
no longer recognize.”15 In another article on “Eurabia” and “the planned Islamization of Europe,” Mannheimer cautions, “All over, Muslims are working
at seizing power… The influence of Muslims on European politics and political power is already enormous.”16
13 http://www.pi-news.net/leitlinien/.
14 Ibid.
15 http://michael-mannheimer.info/2011/12/25/die-islamisierung-ist-ein-genozid-amdeutschen-volk-im-sinne-der-resolution-260-der-un/ and http://www.pi-news.net/2011/
12/mannheimer-islamisierung-ist-volkermord/ (last accessed on 20 July 2014).
16 http://www.pi-news.net/2009/08/eurabia-die-geplante-islamisierung-europas/.
143
The term “Eurabia,” which has the sense of a conspiracy to transform Europe
into a Muslim continent, was coined by Gisèle Littman, who writes under
the pseudonym “Bat Ye’or” and has a lively readership in radical Islamophobic circles.17 In his manifesto, Anders Breivik boasts that he received source
materials from Ye’or personally.18 Her book Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis was
published in 2005. She gave an interview to the Jerusalem Post in September 2008, when the Hebrew translation of her book was coming out. Ye’or
predicted that Europe’s elites would make themselves subservient to the increasingly powerful Muslims, explaining that the Second World War had
exhausted Europe. Ye’or claims that the continent is making a pact with its
Muslim enemies in order to avoid violent conflicts in the future. Muslims are
infiltrating Western educational institutions, she continues, for the purpose
of indoctrination: “European universities — like those in America — are totally
controlled by the Arab-Islamic lobby, as are the schools.” Ye’or alleges that
Muslims want to see Western and Eastern Europe divided geopolitically, since
“it is easier to take over the West as a whole when it’s divided.”19
According to these Islamophobic authors and their sympathizers, all of
Western Europe has been infiltrated, and they consider its “autochthonous”
populations to be partly defenseless victims and partly active collaborators.
In reaction to the German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s participation in the
breaking of the fast during Ramadan in 2015, PI commenters criticized her
as a “traitor to her people.”20 They assumed that the reasons for her “cowardly
proactive submission” to Muslim interests were the growing number of Muslim voters and the wealth of oil-exporting Islamic countries. Thus, one commentator scoffed: “Has the Protestant woman already converted or did the
sheikhs just grease her palms?”21
The accusation that European politicians receive bribes and, so, “sell out”
their homelands implies that Muslims are enormously powerful. The conspiracy of elites and minorities against the people is a core belief of right-wing
populists.22 Their fear-mongering scenario of Muslims and Islam spreading
throughout Europe shows a shift in racist thought: Conventional European
racist discourses usually stigmatize Muslims as backward and culturally inferior, while the new populists imagine them to be a fifth column that works
17 See Matt Carr, “You are now entering Eurabia,” Race & Class 48, no. 1 (2006): 1–22.
18 See Anders Behring Breivik alias Andrew Berwick, “2083: A European Declaration of Independence”, 49: http://info.publicintelligence.net/AndersBehringBreivikManifesto.pdf.
19 http://www.jpost.com/Features/One-on-One-A-dhimmi-view-of-Europe.
20 http://www.pi-news.net/2015/06/kanzlerin-merkel-nimmt-am-fastenbrechen-teil/.
21 Ibid.
22 See Oliver Geden, Rechtspopulismus. Funktionslogiken – Gelegenheitsstrukturen – Gegenstrategien (Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, 2007), http://www.swp-berlin.org/
fileadmin/contents/products/studien/2007_S17_gdn_ks.pdf.
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from within to destroy Western societies. The fiction of a threatening Muslim
domination resembles patterns of antisemitic thinking. Thus, the new antiMuslim discourses combine different threads of traditional racist thinking
by simultaneously ascribing inferiority and supremacy. The attitude of superiority over the Orient, whose roots are in European colonialism’s construal
of it as an object to be civilized, merges with a traditional fear of Muslims that
goes further back in history. The menacing idea of the infiltration and subjugation of the West modernizes the Christian European scenarios of fear of
the Middle Ages and early modern times. According to the historian Almut
Höfert, in historical discourse on the “Turk menace,” people assumed “that
all of Christianity was threatened to be overrun by the Anti-Christ as embodied by the Ottomans.”23 This apocalyptic narrative echoes in the presentday theme of a threatening “Islamization of Europe.”
“Taqiyya” and “Birth Jihad”:
The Accusations of Deception and Strategic Reproduction
In addition to the infiltration fantasy, the inventory of core anti-Muslim topoi
on the Internet includes fantasies of deception. According to what one finds
on Politically Incorrect under the heading “Taqiyya,” Muslims who do not express extremist views are liars and “outed” by PI as frauds. The Arabic word
“taqiyya,” which can be translated as “dissimulation in the face of danger,” refers to the denial of one’s faith when one’s life, or the lives of family members,
is threatened. Historically, taqiyya was primarily practiced by Shiites, who
were repeatedly persecuted as heretics by the Sunni Orthodoxy.24 The concept
comes from sura 16, verse 106 of the Qur’an, according to which God does
not punish someone who denies Him under duress. Taqiyya is by no means a
commandment to deceive; it merely provides protection from divine punishment for denying one’s faith in the case of threatened violence. Islamophobes
deliberately misinterpret and distort the concept of taqiyya in order to insinuate that Muslims have a special duty to deceive others.
In an article saying that “the Taqiyya Masters are most dangerous,” PI ’s
author Michael Stürzenberger claimed that Mouhanad Khorchide, a professor
23 Almut Höfert, “Alteritätsdiskurse. Analyseparameter historischer Antagonismusnarrative und ihre historiographischen Folgen,” in Repräsentationen der islamischen Welt im
Europa der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Gabriele Haug-Moritz and Ludolf Pelizaeus (Münster:
Aschendorff, 2010), 28.
24 See Egbert Meyer, “Anlaß und Anwendungsbereich der taqiyya,” Der Islam. Zeitschrift
für Geschichte und Kultur des islamischen Orients 57, no. 2 (1980): 249.
145
of Islamic religious education at the Westphalian Wilhelm University in Münster, was a “liar” and “brazen deceiver.” In a newspaper interview, Khorchide
had spoken about his belief that God is merciful, and Stürzenberger presumed
that this was a tactical maneuver: “This native-born Lebanese man completed
his Islamic studies in Beirut. I believe he was trained and sent here for propaganda purposes in order to promote Islamization. The clear strategy of such
taqiyya experts is to lull the nonbelieving society into believing the fairytale
of ‘peaceful Islam,’ until Muslims are in the position of the majority and then
true Islam can take power.”25 PI ’s authors and readers see Islamist terrorism as
the embodiment of “true Islam,” which is why they are convinced that Muslims
who express a different understanding of Islam are dissembling. The charge of
deception reinforces itself in anti-Islamic thinking because its targets cannot
refute it: Islamophobes consider any denial to be itself a deception, and they
interpret any deviation from what they see as typical Islamic behavior as cunning employed in the pursuit of ulterior motives.
The theme of feigned acculturation, which one also finds in the notion of a
sleeper cell, which intelligence agencies began to employ shortly after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, appears on anti-Muslim websites in close
connection with the subject of the conspiracy for the “silent Islamization” of
Europe. According to Islamophobes, the silence of the Islamization now taking place explains why the majority populations of Western countries have so
far been defenseless against it, offering hardly any resistance. Thus, the owners of the Islamophobic blogs have made it their priority to initiate resistance.
According to the opinions propagated on anti-Muslim websites, Muslims’
most important weapon for “Islamization” is strategic reproduction. The
catchword “birth jihad,” in which “jihad” refers to a war in the service of Islam,
expresses this idea of a demographic struggle against the European majority.
In his speech at a rally in Munich on 1 September 2012, a video of which was
posted on PI and YouTube, PI ’s author Michael Stürzenberger put it this way:
“It is the demographics. That is the dangerous development that no one notices because it creeps along, little by little. Year after year, Muslims in Germany have three
times more children than non-Muslims. It is the birth jihad, a declared part of their
strategy. And if you have patience, it can take decades, it can take sixty or seventy
years… And, then, due to the demographics, they will take power, absolutely legally.
They’ll take over here and then God have mercy on our children, who will have to experience that.”26
Scandalizing the fertility of Muslims usually goes hand in hand with complaining about the high rates of abortion and childlessness among white Germans
25 http://www.pi-news.net/2012/10/die-taqiyya-spezialisten-sind-die-gefahrlichsten/.
26 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=38q4AklodOQ.
146
Yasemin Shooman
and other white Europeans. There are also numerous tirades against “aging
childless women’s libbers” and the “feminist ideology,” which are to blame for
the dying out of the “autochthonous Germans.”27
Taking Up Emancipatory Discourses
Considering this explicit anti-feminism, women’s rights are broached in rightwing populist contexts only if the issue can be used as a rhetorical weapon
against Muslims. Similarly, the discussion of egalitarianism on Islamophobic
websites is a key legitimation strategy justifying the aversion to Islam on the
basis of human rights and the protection of women and homosexuals. Criticism of patriarchal structures and sexist attitudes among Muslims is a recurrent theme in the postings on anti-Islam blogs. Such arguments are a pretext,
and they generally accompany bloggers’ own sexist attitudes, as the many discriminatory comments about women whose political positions are criticized
documents.28
The same is true for the subject of homophobia. It seems that the concerns of homosexuals are of interest only to the extent that they can be upheld
against Muslims. On the one hand, indignation was expressed on PI when a
Muslim congregation in Berlin cancelled an event with the Lesbian and Gay
Federation (LSVD). One commentator wrote: “If homosexuals, feminists, and
church representatives still had an ounce of sanity, they would march right up
in front of our PEGIDA demonstrations! Because they will be the first to be
strung up from the jib of a crane in an Islamic society.”29 On the other hand,
homosexuals are accused of wanting “to force their gay worldview onto the
majority,”30 and commenters rant about “aggressive homopropaganda in our
media,”31 lament the repeal in 1994 of Sec. 175 of the German criminal code,
which criminalized homosexual acts between males,32 and openly express
their disgust toward homosexuals.33
An analysis of such posts shows that the charge of sexism and homophobia
is instrumentalized to justify anti-Muslim racism, which serves simultaneously
as bloggers’ strategy to mask and project their own sexism and homophobia.
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
http://www.pi-news.net/2008/10/desperate-feminists/.
See for example: http://www.pi-news.net/2015/07/kahane-der-osten-ist-zu-weiss/.
http://www.pi-news.net/2014/11/berlin-sehitlik-moschee-laedt-schwule-aus/.
http://www.pi-news.net/2015/06/schwulenflagge-vor-thueringer-staatskanzlei/.
http://www.pi-news.net/2013/12/nichts-belegt-die-existenz-von-homophobie/.
http://www.pi-news.net/2015/06/schwulenflagge-vor-thueringer-staatskanzlei/.
See for example: http://www.pi-news.net/2015/05/westfalenblatt-feuert-homophobe-kolum
nistin/.
147
Jews and Israel as an Alibi
A similar legitimation strategy is the rhetorical instrumentalization of Jews
and the state of Israel, which the Islamophobic Internet community sees as “the
free West’s first line of defense against Islam.” “Israel is the civilizational buffer against perpetual, merciless Islamic barbarism,” according to PI.34 “If Jerusalem falls into the hands of the Muslims, Athens and Rome will be next,” as
PI approvingly cited one of Geert Wilders’s convictions.35 In these circles, support for Israel goes hand in hand with a racially motivated rejection of Muslims. Thus, flare-ups in the Israel-Palestine conflict are sometimes welcome
opportunities to indulge in fantasies of violence against Muslims, in particular
Palestinians. As one PI commenter put it: “Israel: Wipe Palestine out! Obliterate everything, you can do it!”36 At the same time, positive references to Israel
allow Islamophobes to repudiate charges of racism and right-wing extremism.
Thus, in 2010, representatives of European right-wing populist parties, including the small German political party Die Freiheit [Freedom],37 the Freedom Party of Austria [FPÖ], the Belgian Vlaams Belang [Flemish Interest], and
the Sweden Democrats, visited Israel at the invitation by Eliezer Cohen, a former right-wing member of the Knesset. They published a joint statement, the
Jerusalem Declaration, wherein they expressed their “criticism of Islam as a
totalitarian system seeking world domination.”38 Similarly, PI activists make
it a point to carry the flag of Israel at anti-Muslim demonstrations. According
to Alexander Häusler, who conducts research on right-wing extremism, some
of Europe’s extreme right adopt philosemitism as a strategy to modernize and
make its racist views compatible with the views of the general public.39
Islamophobes’ attitudes toward Jews living in Germany, however, are ambivalent. In his protest, on the Internet and in Munich’s pedestrian zone,
against plans for building a mosque, Michael Stürzenberger, the national
leader of Germany’s Freedom Party, emphasized his philosemitism and the
support that he claimed to receive from Jews: “We from Freedom and at PI
feel a profound sense of solidarity with the only democracy in the Middle
34
35
36
37
http://www.pi-news.net/2014/07/hamas-krieg-gegen-israel-das-medienmuster/.
http://www.pi-news.net/2010/06/wilders-jordanien-soll-palaestina-werden.
Ibid.
The party Die Freiheit (Freedom) is a small party that was founded in 2010, modeled after the Dutch Partij voor de Vrijheid (Party for Freedom) of the right-wing populist Geert
Wilders.
38 http://www.pi-news.net/2010/12/jerusalemer-erklaerung-verabschiedet/.
39 See Alexander Häusler, “Feindbild Moslem. Türöffner von Rechtsaußen hinein in die
Mitte?” in Islamophobie und Antisemitismus – ein umstrittener Vergleich, ed. Gideon
Botsch et al. (Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), 169–190.
148
Yasemin Shooman
East, the Jewish people, and all Jews in Germany, who think clearly and are
aware of the danger posed by Islamization. I am proud that there is a Jew on
our list of candidates for the city council and that he is a valued member of
our party. I am always pleased by the Jews who gladly seek us out at our rallies
and confirm the importance of our outreach work.”40 However, Islamophobes
consider Jews as allies only so long as they share their political positions or let
themselves be co-opted. As soon as a Jew speaks out against anti-Muslim agitation or shows solidarity with Muslims, he becomes a target of PI’s activists.
One example of this is Munich’s city councilor Marian Offman (CSU), who
has spoken out in favor of building of the mosque that Michael Stürzenberger
and his supporters are trying to block. Stürzenberger attacked Offman on PI,
focusing on the fact that he is Jewish:
It is totally crazy that the Jew Marian Offman evidently sees his calling in making
Jew-hating Islam socially acceptable in Europe… By currying favor with this dangerous ideology and supporting the Islamization of Germany, appeasers like Offman will
have to face charges of treason someday before German courts… Marian Offman’s
conduct… is unworthy of a Jew.41
However, it is not only in cases in which Jews do not let themselves be instrumentalized as adversaries of Muslims that the philosemitism of Islamophobes
seems more likely to be part of a legitimation strategy than a true rejection of
antisemitism. Antisemitic tones can be detected on PI when Jews become visible as a religious minority in Germany, as when the subject of ritual slaughtering is raised and during the debate on circumcision that was triggered in
the summer of 2012 when the Cologne regional court declared that the religious circumcision of boys constituted bodily harm. At that time, Jews found
themselves suddenly grouped with Muslims by PI and demonized for their religious practice. As one commenter on PI concluded: “This has nothing to do
with hatred of Jews, but it is a display of the same moaning and groaning that
we usually hear just from Muslims.”42 Somebody else commented, “Whether
Jews or Muslims — all child mutilators need to be reported,” and a third blogger held that, “If some people — no matter whether Muslims or Jews — want to
continue their medieval rituals, they should go to countries where this is common practice.”43 But others on PI opposed such comments: “People, enough
already, leave the Jews alone with their circumcision!” and “A Germany without Jews and Jewish life? NO THANKS!!!”44 It is inconceivable that similar
40 http://www.pi-news.net/2014/03/csu-offman-im-tuerken-journal-interview-judentumislam-und-christentum-gleichwertig/.
41 Ibid.
42 http://www.pi-news.net/2012/08/ein-gesprach-uber-die-beschneidung-im-judentum/.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid.
149
attitudes towards Muslims would be expressed on PI. Nevertheless, the antiJewish comments indicate that the strategically adopted philosemitism in
Islamophobic circles is fragile and falls away as soon as Jews do not allow
themselves to be incorporated into anti-Muslim arguments. As one of PI ’s
commentators remarked during the circumcision debate himself, “In your
blind zeal against Islam, with regard to the subject of circumcision you have
proved yourselves in passing to be enemies of Judaism.”45
Racist Stigmatization
Anti-Muslim websites share one key feature, namely the frequent use of variations of racist ascription that usually are supported with culturalist and sometimes biologically deterministic arguments. Beyond a homogenizing depiction as collective, the category Muslim is frequently used as ethnic label. This
is particularly evident when individuals are identified as Muslims on the basis of their name only, and characteristics ascribed to them are derived from
their supposed affiliation with Islam. Any behavior that is perceived as negative and adopted by individuals marked as Muslims is thereby depicted as
rooted in Islamic norms. For example, one constantly recurring stereotype
is the “welfare-scrounging Muslim.” Anti-Muslim websites accuse Muslims
in Germany of “living off the fat of the land,”46 not wanting to work, and
exploiting the social welfare system. Another equally predominant stereotype
is that Muslims have a pronounced affinity for violence, especially sexual violence, which is rooted in their religion and culture. Again and again, authors
on these sites cite police reports and news coverage of rapes and assaults
whose perpetrators are described as Mediterranean looking (südländisch),
that is, as having dark skin and hair. These physical features are taken as an
indication for the Muslim identity of the perpetrators. In cases of missing description of perpetrators’ physical appearance in the coverage PI readers suspect the media of hiding their Muslim identities.
Islamophobes assume that because of their religion Muslims are disloyal to
Germany and German society and are not able to be fully fledged Germans.
Thus, commenters on PI call Cemile Giousouf, a member of the German
Bundestag and the child of Turkish immigrants, “a wolf in sheep’s clothing”
and “a Trojan horse,”47 and accuse the Minister of State Aydan Özoğuz, also
45 http://www.pi-news.net/2012/07/widerstand-gegen-das-beschneidungsgesetz/.
46 http://www.pi-news.net/2013/09/elf-turken-im-neuen-deutschen-bundestag/.
47 http://www.pi-news.net/2013/10/neue-cdu-abgeordnete-cemile-giousouf-macht-antritts
besuch-beim-turkischen-botschafter/.
150
Yasemin Shooman
of Turkish descent, of being “a Muslim submarine.”48 According to this perception, being a Muslim is always linked to the danger that their apparent integration into German society is feigned. One commentator put it in no uncertain terms: “And even if she was born in Germany ten times, has a German
passport, and sits in the German Bundestag, she is not one of us.”49 Such accusations, in which politicians marked as Muslims (including some who do
not publically identify as Muslim) are suspected of secretly representing only
“Islamic” interests, are a racist interpretation of taqiyya.
What conclusions do the website’s writers and readers draw from their hostile assessments of the Muslim minority? Repeatedly commenters emphasize
that it would be better for Europe’s future if no Muslims were to live here and
make demands to that effect: “Islam out of Germany and out of Europe”!50
They also agree that no further immigration of Muslims should be permitted
and that only Christian refugees should have the right to asylum, calling Muslim asylum seekers “invaders” who have to be removed from the country.51
Mobilization and Social Impact
The impact of this hatred of Muslims played out online on the everyday lives
of users is unclear. What is clear is that these weblogs offer a forum in which
participants mutually reinforce each other’s hostility and that, through the
daily confirmation of their attitudes, without being challenged by dissenting
views, they construct their own information universe and immunize themselves against a change of mind. Anti-Muslim blogs and social networks also
subserve the efforts of the like-minded, like the previously mentioned PEGIDA
movement, to mobilize themselves for activities beyond the Internet. For example, the right-wing populist movement Pax Europa, some of whose members are also PI bloggers, attempts to initiate local groups to oppose the construction of mosques, and its website offers instructions on how to do that.52
48 http://www.pi-news.net/2015/03/aydan-oezoguz-spd-fordert-gleichbehandlung-vonmigranten-im-gesundheitswesen/.
49 Ibid.
50 http://www.pi-news.net/2014/11/video-orf-2-gewalt-im-islam-was-wirklich-im-koransteht/.
51 http://www.pi-news.net/2015/07/asyl-was-ist-zu-tun-und-was-tun-andere-laender/.
52 See http://bpeinfo.wordpress.com/moschee-nein-danke/. Similar initiatives also join
forces in other European countries via the Internet. See Chris Allen, “Anti-Social Networking: Findings From a Pilot Study on Opposing Dudley Mosque Using Facebook
Groups as Both Site and Method for Research,” SAGE Open 4, no. 1 (January 2014): 1–12,
doi: 10.1177/2158244014522074.
151
Furthermore, Islamophobic activists seek to do “outreach work” by organizing
information stands in pedestrian zones, making appearances at events, distributing leaflets, and gathering signatures for petitions. Like the Swiss referendum in 2009 to ban minarets, they aim to prevent the future building of
mosques and Muslim centers by requiring majority approval for such projects.
Cyber activism is another form of mobilization. Cyber activists, for example, intimidate, or at least exert pressure on, politicians who oppose their
aims. PI and other Islamophobic blogs regularly publish the email addresses
of people identified as “gravediggers of the Occident” with the understanding
that supporters are to flood their inboxes. For another example, as soon as the
online edition of a newspaper puts an article on the subject of Islam online, a
large number of PI users post comments in an effort to influence readers.
So far, the reactions of politicians and civil society to anti-Muslim racism on the Internet has been reserved. Although the Bavarian Office for the
Protection of the Constitution (Verfassungsschutz), which is the state’s domestic intelligence agency, keeps watch on Michael Stürzenberger’s PI group
in Munich, having classified its activities as “intelligence-relevant Islamophobic efforts outside of right-wing extremism,”53 Germany’s federal government concluded in June 2014 that there “are only a few actual indications of
the existence of such an intelligence-relevant Islamophobia as an independent
phenomenon.”54
The Federal Review Board for Media Harmful to Minors (BPjM) and the
Commission for the Protection of Minors in the Media (KJM), both of which
have the task of putting on the index of media harmful to young people whatever is “immoral, brutal, or which incite violence, crimes, or racial hatred,”
have not as yet found on the Politically Incorrect website any “content liable to
harm young people, which would have justified its being put on the Review
Board’s index.” Their review over an extended period of time found that “no
agitation against differently minded people or certain groups of people, such
as Muslims, is being pursued.”55
Such appraisals show that society has not yet recognized the virulence of
virtual Islamophobia. The political challenge arises not only from its propagation but also from a widespread insecurity how to tackle the phenomenon
appropriately.
53 http://www.verfassungsschutz.bayern.de/imperia/md/content/lfv_internet/islamfeind
lichkeit_als_verfassungsfeindliche_str_mung.pdf (last accessed on 20 July 2014).
54 http://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/18/016/1801627.pdf.
55 Email information of the KJM of 9 April 2013 and 15 April 2013. According to information of the BPjM of 5 June 2014 up to now there have been no changes in this appraisal.
152
Yasemin Shooman
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Christentum gleichwertig.” Politically Incorrect, 13 March 2014; http://www.pi-news.
net/2014/03/csu-offman-im-tuerken-journal-interview-judentum-islam-und-christentumgleichwertig/.
Stürzenberger, Michael. “Die Taqiyya-Meister sind die Gefährlichsten.” Politically Incorrect, 15 October 2012; http://www.pi-news.net/2012/10/die-taqiyya-spezialisten-sind-diegefahrlichsten/.
Stürzenberger, Michael. “Gedenkveranstaltung München 1972 – Rede Michael Stürzenberger
Teil 2.” 4 September 2012; http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=
38q4AklodOQ.
Stürzenberger, Michael. “Thesenpapier gegen die Islamisierung.” Politically Incorrect, 19 November 2011; http://www.pi-news.net/2011/10/thesenpapier-gegen-die-islamisierung/.
Stürzenberger, Michael. “Video ORF 2: ‘Gewalt im Islam – Was wirklich im Koran steht.’” Politically Incorrect, 1 November 2014; http://www.pi-news.net/2014/11/video-orf-2-gewalt-imislam-was-wirklich-im-koran-steht/.
Verfassungsschutz Bayern. “Islamfeindlichkeit als verfassungsfeindliche Strömung.” http://
www.verfassungsschutz.bayern.de/imperia/md/content/lfv_internet/islamfeindlichkeit_
als_verfassungsfeindliche_str_mung.pdf.
Wappendorf, A. “Desperate Feminists.” Politically Incorrect, 16 October 2008; http://www.
pi-news.net/2008/10/desperate-feminists/.
Abstract
Aufgrund bestimmter Charakteristika, wie der weitgehenden Anonymität und
fehlenden Kontrollmechanismen sowie dem problemlosen Informationsaustausch über nationale Grenzen hinweg, kommt dem Internet als Medium bei
der Verbreitung und Popularisierung ausgrenzenden Gedankenguts eine wichtige Rolle zu. Dies gilt auch im Hinblick auf sein Mobilisierungspotenzial, wie
zuletzt das Beispiel der Protestbewegung Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes (PEGIDA) gezeigt hat, die ihre Anhängerschaft
in erster Linie über die sozialen Netzwerke im Internet rekrutierte. Im Fokus
des Beitrags stehen deutschsprachige islamfeindliche Webseiten, auf denen die
Ausgrenzung und Diskriminierung von in westlichen Ländern lebenden muslimischen Minderheiten propagiert wird. Analysiert werden ihre ideologische
Ausrichtung sowie die dominanten Argumentationsstrategien und Topoi. Elemente des Alltagsrassismus gegenüber muslimisch markierten Migrant*innen
und ihren Nachfahren werden dabei mit Verschwörungstheorien angereichert,
die zum Teil an antisemitische Argumentationsmuster erinnern.
155
Dr. Yasemin Shooman is Head of the Academy Programs of the Jewish Museum Berlin.
She is responsible for the Academy’s Programs on Migration and Diversity and the
Jewish-Islamic forum. She holds a Magister degree in Modern History and German
Philology and received her Ph. D. from the Center for Research on Antisemitism at
the Technische Universität Berlin, where she had previously worked inter alia as an
associate on the research project “Der Ort des Terrors – Die Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager” [The Site of Terror – History of the Nazi Concentration Camps] and as a project manager for a Summer School on Antisemitism and
prejudices against minorities in everyday life. Her research interests include racism,
Islamophobia, Antisemitism, and media analysis. Her doctoral dissertation, “… weil
ihre Kultur so ist:” Narrative des antimuslimischen Rassismus [“… Because That’s How
Their Culture Is:” Narratives of Anti-Muslim Racism] was published in 2014 by the
transcript Verlag, Bielefeld.
Chapter 3
Media Content and Its Effect
Peter Widmann
Stereotypes, Sound Bites,
and Campaign Strategies
The Interaction between Politicians and Journalists in
the German Debate on Roma from Southeastern Europe
In 2013/14, a long familiar topic was once again attracting attention in
Germany. Politicians, journalists, and scholars were debating how to assess
immigration from Southeastern Europe. Terms such as Armutsmigration
[poverty-driven migration] and Einwanderung in die Sozialsysteme [immigration into social-security systems] were in the air. According to reports, a large
number of destitute people, who were incapable of integration, were flocking to Germany from Southeastern Europe, and city governments were overwhelmed with the task of housing and caring for them. It was said that many
immigrants were coming to Germany to apply for welfare benefits and either
did not intend to look for work on the German labor market or did not have
the necessary language or professional skills to do so.
The debate centered on immigrants from Bulgaria and Romania. Both
countries had joined the EU in 2007 and thus become part of a common market that was organized around four fundamental freedoms: the unrestricted
movement of goods, services, capital, and people. In order to protect national
labor markets after this enlargement of the EU, several of the older member
states, including Germany, issued seven-year transitional regulations that,
while not prohibiting Bulgarians and Romanians from working in other EU
countries, placed restrictions on their right to do so.1 With the expiration of
these regulations on 1 January 2014, fears of uncontrolled immigration grew.
Reports on German TV and online news sites and in German newspapers repeatedly mentioned the Roma people. It was claimed that in various German
cities they made up a large percentage of the people living in squalid quarters
and without any work prospects.
1 European Commission, memo “End of restrictions on free movement of workers from
Bulgaria and Romania,” 1 January 2014, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO 14–1_en.htm (accessed 28 March 2015).
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The spotlight was thus focused on an ethnic group that since the fall of
the Iron Curtain had repeatedly been seen as embodying the dangers of immigration from Eastern Europe. In early September 1990, four weeks before German reunification, the weekly Der Spiegel pictured on its cover a
throng of dark-skinned people, some holding children, looking expectantly
into the camera.2 The headline above them read “Asylum in Germany? The
Gypsies.” In the following years, when the country’s asylum policy had become a heatedly debated political topic — primarily as a result of violent rightwing extremists’ attacks on refugees — press reports often focused on Roma,
and this minority group remained at the center of media attention after Germany restricted the fundamental right to asylum in 1993. Tabloids presented
readers with stories about gangs from Southeastern Europe who used children
to steal from passers-by in German cities. And, in summer 2002, the Kölner
Express featured a cover in the style of a wanted poster showing more than
50 photographs of children’s faces under the headline “The Child Thieves of
Cologne.”3
When ten Central and Eastern European states joined the EU in 2004,
many observers feared that the Roma people, in particular, would immigrate
in large numbers to Germany. Television footage of Slovakian slums where
Roma lived on the margins of society fueled the anxiety in Germany that
many would soon head westward in the hope of a better life there. Though
mass Roma immigration never materialized after this initial eastern enlargement of the EU, people had similar fears when Romania and Bulgaria became
EU members in 2007.
In 2013 and 2014, the German public once again saw images of Roma in
squalid living conditions on television and online news sites and in newspapers. Now, though, the shots were of German cities — of Duisburg, for example, where a rundown building with 47 apartments made national headlines. There were also reports, including one from the Neukölln district of
Berlin, that Roma families with large numbers of children were living off the
monthly child benefit they received.4 Although there was no reliable data
on Roma immigration from Romania and Bulgaria and it was impossible
to say how widespread this practice was, the reports created the impression
that Germany was threatened with the general decay of its urban districts and
the abuse of its social-welfare system.
2 Der Spiegel, 3 September 1990.
3 Kölner Express, 22 August 2002.
4 Lisa Caspari, “Verarmte Roma, überforderte Kommunen,” Die Zeit, 19 February 2013,
www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2013–02/roma-grossstaedte-bulgarien-rumaenienstaedtetag-strategie.
Stereotypes, Sound Bites, and Campaign Strategies
161
Stereotypes
Many of these reports renewed stereotypical ideas about Roma that drew on
traditional views of “Gypsies.” From the 19th century onward, novels, poems,
operettas, folk songs, hit pop songs, and movies presented the so-called “Gypsy
life” as the antithesis to civilization. Depending on how the creators of such
representations regarded civilization — whether as a project of the Enlightenment and a manifestation of progress or a threat to human freedom — the
“Gypsies” they portrayed were either of a primitive culture or noble savages
who, free from the constraints of bourgeois life, happily roamed the land to
the sounds of beautiful music.5
Variants of these ideas can be found in many of the press reports from
2013/14. One example is the headline “With the Influx of Roma, Worlds Collide” in the 25 February 2013 issue of Die Welt.6 The article underneath, which
addresses the conflicts between the residents of Duisburg-Rheinhausen and
Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants, presents the Roma as a people with
fundamentally different attitudes and values than the citizens of a modern
state. In the article, the neighbors of an apartment building inhabited primarily by Roma report on the “abysmal conditions on the other side of the
street: loud music, shouting, and barbecue parties until late at night, garbage thrown from windows, human excrement on the premises, no manners,
no decency.”
A traditional aspect of both the romantic and the derogatory ideas about
“Gypsies” is the clichéd belief that as a group they are hostile to vocational
training and regular work and would rather make a living from begging,
theft, scams, and the fraudulent collection of welfare benefits. To the editors
of Die Welt, it was apparently so obvious that crime was a Roma characteristic that in February 2013 they used an image of four colorfully dressed women
in headscarves and long skirts to illustrate an article about German deportation policy toward criminal immigrants — an article that never even mentioned Roma.7 Under the headline “Friedrich to Deport Criminal Eastern
5 On the various stereotypes about Roma in the contemporary media, see, most recently,
Markus End, Antiziganismus in der deutschen Öffentlichkeit: Strategien und Mechanismen
medialer Kommunikation (Heidelberg: Dokumentations- und Kulturzentrum Deutscher
Sinti und Roma, 2014).
6 Kristian Frigelj, “Mit Zuzug der Roma prallen Welten aufeinander,” Die Welt, 25 February 2013, www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article113882481/Mit-Zuzug-der-Roma-prallenWelten-aufeinander.html.
7 “Friedrich will kriminelle Osteuropäer abschieben,” Die Welt, 23 February 2013, www.
welt.de/politik/deutschland/article113850055/Friedrich-will-kriminelle-Osteuropaeerabschieben.html.
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Europeans,” the paper reported that the German Interior Minister, HansPeter Friedrich, had called on municipal authorities to take decisive action
against “poverty-driven refugees” from Bulgaria and Romania. The caption
of the accompanying photograph is the only place where Roma are mentioned
by name: “Germany 2012: A group of Roma women crossing Alexanderplatz
in Berlin.” The editors thus made Roma a symbol for criminals from Eastern
Europe. It was apparently so obvious to them that their readers would associate this minority with crime that they did not deem it necessary to make the
alleged connection explicit.
Exemplifications
Stereotypes about Roma can be found primarily in articles that report on local events. Drawing on the work of the political scientist and communication
scholar Shanto Iyengar, such articles have an “episodic” frame of reference.8
They are limited to specific places and times and feature anecdotes and direct quotes from residents, social workers, and public employees. Their authors often characterize Roma not by explicitly attributing any traits to them
but by identifying them as an ethnic group and then describing conditions
that fail to meet middle-class norms of cleanliness, morality, and so on and,
thus, confirm traditional associations with the “Gypsy life.” For example, in
July 2014, under the headline “Roma Building Declared Uninhabitable,” Germany’s largest tabloid, Bild, reported that the city of Duisburg wanted to evict
economic refugees from Romania from a rundown building in the Rheinhausen district. Although the newspaper did not explain the term “Roma
building,” readers learned that 44 adults and 120 children lived on the premises; the owner worked in the “red light business;” and a neighbor had complained about rats, garbage, and noise.9
This combination of themes — large numbers of children, sexual licentiousness, squalor, and indifference to the peace and public order — so perfectly
matched traditional ideas about “Gypsy” characteristics that it seemed unnecessary to explain what had caused the situation. In other words, the author
left it to readers to construct their own explanations in terms of the ethnic
character of the people described. As in many other articles, the individuals
described as “poverty-driven migrants” remained shadowy and elusive. Most
8 Shanto Iyengar, Is Anyone Responsible? How Television Frames Political Issues (Chicago
and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991), passim.
9 Marc Oliver Hänig, “Roma-Haus für unbewohnbar erklärt,” Bild, 16 July 2014, www.bild.
de/regional/ruhrgebiet/roma/romahaus-muss-geraeumt-werden-36837692.bild.html.
163
such pieces quote residents, politicians, and representatives of public administrations but hardly ever the immigrants themselves.
Although the episodically framed articles from this period limited themselves to specific people and places, many of them nevertheless suggested that
they were describing general developments. In other words, they implied that
the unacceptable conditions in one place exemplified those in many other German cities. To achieve this effect, all a journalist had to do was use the term
“poverty-driven immigration,” as it conjured up the image of a mass movement
of people from Eastern to Western Europe. Many articles also used phrases
along the lines of “in cities such as Düsseldorf, Duisburg, and Mannheim.”
The “such as” before the list implied that more than the mentioned cities were
affected by the intolerable conditions described. At times, authors explicitly stated that their observations of one city were meant to exemplify others.
This can be seen in an article published in the 16 July 2014 issue of Die Welt.
The conditions in an apartment building in Duisburg, the journalist writes,
“turned a spotlight on the problems of poverty-driven immigration across
Europe.”10 This practice follows a frequently observed dialectic inherent to
the media’s presentation of “evidence:” an event makes headlines because it
violates the norms of what is familiar; at the same time, those headlines draw
their significance by implying that they refer to a widespread phenomenon.
A second type of press coverage is also observable, at times in the very same
newspaper. It uses frames that can be assigned to Shanto Iyengar’s “thematic”
category. Whereas the episodically framed articles employ a narrative mode
of presentation, the thematically framed pieces are dominated by analysis. In
addition to questioning the appropriateness of terms such as “poverty-driven
immigration” and “immigration into social security systems,” the authors of
these articles describe the legal situation and discuss the campaign interests
of the politicians using the buzzwords. In addition, they cite studies and statistics that show that only a small number of immigrants from Romania and
Bulgaria applied for welfare benefits.11
In his experiments on American TV coverage of social and political issues,
Shanto Iyengar showed that episodic and thematic frames lead people to draw
different conclusions about the causes of problems.12 For example, TV viewers
who watch episodic reports about poverty tend to attribute it to the personal
10 Kristian Frigelj, “Roma müssen Problemhaus bis Ende Juli verlassen,” Die Welt, 16 July
2014, www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article130234317/Roma-muessen-Problemhausbis-Ende-Juli-verlassen.html.
11 An example of a thematically framed article is Corinna Budras, “Welche Sozialleistungen stehen EU-Bürgern zu?” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 28 March 2014, www.faz.
net/aktuell/wirtschaft/wirtschaftspolitik/armutszuwanderung-welche-sozialleistungenstehen-eu-buergern-zu-12865438.html.
12 Iyengar, Is Anyone Responsible?
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weaknesses of the affected people, while viewers who watch thematic reports
link poverty to social factors. Both of these reference frames can be found in
the German media’s coverage of poverty-driven migration in 2013/14.13 In the
national coverage from 2014 that was evaluated for this essay, we find a preponderance of thematically framed reports; however, it can be assumed that
the share of episodic reports is higher in the local and regional press.
The Selection of Topics
Ever since the fall of the Iron Curtain, the German media have presented
Roma mainly in connection with intolerable situations or as threats. This can
be seen even in the reports that identify Roma not as the root cause of a problem but as victims of poverty and marginalization. German newspapers, television programs, and online news sites almost never depict Roma as citizens
of the country or as classmates, neighbors, or colleagues. This is partially due
to the criteria that news editors use in deciding which events to cover. The
topics that make headlines usually concern conflicts between identifiable
parties, are unusual in some way, or provoke fear or other strong emotions.
Everyday unconflicted interactions rarely attract the press’ attention.
There is also a social component. Whereas poverty tends to make groups of
people more visible, the individual who has found his or her place in the work
force, a neighborhood, or the education system has become invisible. Invisibility is not just the result of becoming an established member of society; it is
its prerequisite. If an employer or a landlord knows an applicant’s ethnicity,
that applicant has a much lower chance of getting the job or apartment. This
connection is self-reinforcing. Because of widespread clichés, this mechanism
has a greater impact on Roma than on other population groups. The more
invisible individual Roma who do not fit the stereotype of outsiders without
education or profession become, the more closely poverty comes to be associated with the Roma people as a whole. This in turn increases the pressure to
remain invisible.
Large parts of the German population are unaware that many Roma with
family roots in Southeastern Europe have been living in Germany for decades
and enjoy middle-class prosperity. They include many of the migrant workers
13 However, TV news in the U. S. and Germany is dominated by episodic frames; see Georg
Ruhrmann and Denise Sommer, “Vorurteile und Diskriminierung in den Medien,” in
Diskriminierung und Toleranz: Psychologische Grundlagen und Anwendungsperspektiven, eds. Andreas Beelmann and Kai Jonas (Wiesbaden: Springer VS , 2009), 421; Denise
Sommer and Georg Ruhrmann, “Ought and Ideals: Framing People with Migration
Background in TV News,” Conflict and Communication Online 9 (2010): 1–15.
165
who came to Germany after 1968 as part of the recruitment agreement between
Germany and Yugoslavia. At the time, their German neighbors saw them as
Yugoslav guest workers, and these Yugoslavians probably avoided raising the
subject of their Roma identities for fear of arousing their neighbors’ presumed
prejudice.
Strategic Communication
In a position paper released in January 2013, the Association of German Cities
wrote that immigration from Bulgaria and Romania had resulted in “serious
problems and undesirable developments:”
The immigration of Bulgarian and Romanian nationals without language skills,
job prospects, or a social safety net, who often move into neglected buildings or live
homeless in cities, is having a significant impact on local education, social welfare,
and health care systems, on the labor and housing markets, as well as on local communities as a whole.
According to the paper, the immigration of skilled nationals from both countries usually proceeded smoothly, but the “poverty-driven immigration” of
people who were already marginalized in their home countries was creating
enormous problems. A large percentage of these immigrants were Roma. As a
group, they lacked formal education, professional training, and German language skills. And their “experiential horizons, determined by socialization,”
made integration difficult. The Association of German Cities warned that
xenophobic forces and right-wing groups could take advantage of the situation.14 German newspapers reported on the position paper, and in February
2013 — one month after its publication — the German Interior Minister, HansPeter Friedrich, appealed to municipal authorities to review more strictly the
welfare applications of Bulgarian and Romanian immigrants.15 However, it
took nearly a year for the issue to draw public attention.
On 28 December 2013, under the headline “CSU Plans Offensive against
Poverty-Driven Immigrants,” the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) — the ruling party in Bavaria and a
14 Deutscher Städtetag, “Positionspapier des Deutschen Städtetages zu Fragen der Zuwanderung aus Rumänien und Bulgarien,” 22 January 2013, 1, 2, and 4, www.staedtetag.de/
imperia/md/content/dst/internet/fachinformationen/2013/positionspapier_zuwanderung_
2013.pdf.
15 “Friedrich droht Armutsflüchtlingen mit Abschiebung,” Focus, 23 February 2013, www.
focus.de/politik/deutschland/missbrauch-deutscher-sozialleistungen-friedrich-drohtarmutsfluechtlingen-mit-abschiebung_aid_925765.html.
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Peter Widmann
member of the federal coalition — was laying the groundwork for an anti-immigration campaign. The party wanted to make it more difficult for Bulgarian and Romanian nationals to gain access to German social-welfare systems.
The CSU feared that immigration numbers would increase once the transitional regulations restricting the free movement of people expired. Around
370,000 Romanian and Bulgarian nationals, including many Roma, were already living in Germany at the time. The first paragraph of the Süddeutsche
Zeitung’s article mentioned a slogan from a position paper that the CSU had
drafted for the upcoming conference of its Bundestag members: “Wer betrügt,
der fliegt” — “Cheat the system, get deported.”16 This slogan was to dominate
the debate in the coming months.
The same day, other German news outlets covered the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s exclusive report and the initial responses to it.17 The slogan “Wer betrügt, der fliegt” received special attention and was cited either directly in
headlines or at the beginning of articles. Politicians from other parties criticized the slogan, likening it to extremist right-wing propaganda. Konstantin
von Notz, the deputy leader of the Greens in the Bundestag, said it reminded
him of the election posters of the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany.18 Bernd Riexinger, the national chairman of the Left Party (Die Linke),
described it as “vile rabble-rousing that the CSU is using to incite the brown
mob to violence.”19 Criticism also came from the Social Democratic Party
(SPD), another member of the federal coalition. As Michael Hartmann, the
domestic-policy spokesman for the SPD’s Bundestag contingent, explained,
“Anyone who strikes up this tune is inviting right-wing extremists to dance.”20
16 Robert Roßmann, “CSU plant Offensive gegen Armutsmigranten,” Süddeutsche Zeitung,
28 December 2013, www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/wegen-bulgarien-und-rumaenien-csuplant-offensive-gegen-armutsmigranten-1.1852159.
17 For example, “‘Wer betrügt, der fliegt’ – CSU fordert scharfe Regeln gegen Armutszuwanderer,” Focus, 28 December 2013, www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/csu-will-armuts
migration-verhindern-bulgaren-und-rumaenen-schaerfere-regeln-fuer-sozialleistungen_
id_3507667.html; “Scharfe Kritik der SPD an CSU-Vorstoß ‘Wer betrügt, der fliegt,’” Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 28 December 2013, www.derwesten.de/politik/csu-willzuwanderern-zugang-zum-sozialsystem-erschweren-id8814739.html; and “CSU gegen Arbeitsmigranten – ‘Wer betrügt, der fliegt,’” Tageszeitung, 28 Dezember 2013, www.taz.de/
!130062/.
18 Manuel Bewarder, “Grüne sehen CSU im Fahrwasser der NPD,” Die Welt, 29 December
2013, www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article123380131/Gruene-sehen-CSU-im-Fahrwas
ser-der-NPD.html.
19 “Scharfe Kritik der SPD an CSU-Vorstoß ‘Wer betrügt, der fliegt,’” Westdeutsche Allgemeine
Zeitung, 28 December 2013, www.derwesten.de/politik/csu-will-zuwanderern-zugangzum-sozialsystem-erschweren-id8814739.html.
20 “CSU verlässt den antirassistischen Konsens,” Die Welt, 29 December 2013, http://www.
welt.de/politik/deutschland/article123364445/CSU-verlaesst-den-antirassistischen-Konsens.
html.
167
Based on its contents, style, and how it was used, we can assume that the
position paper containing the slogan was not written solely for discussion
among the CSU’s Bundestag members at their retreat. Rather, it was intended
to reach the public. The disclosure of the text to the Süddeutsche Zeitung in
late December 2013 was probably one of the CSU’s communication strategies.
Published during the news doldrums between Christmas and New Year’s, it
was sure to attract a great deal of attention. Another CSU text found its way
into the media at the same time, a European policy paper, also written for the
party’s upcoming retreat, in which the party voiced its opposition to a “central European government.” It, too, contained a line, a shot at the European
Commission, that many journalists felt compelled to quote: “We need detox
for commissioners high on their regulatory powers.”21
Because it was cited by a large number of media outlets and provoked the
expected responses from the SPD, the Greens, and the Left Party, “Wer betrügt, der fliegt” proved to be a highly effective slogan. The critics could not
help but become part of the show. Their responses allowed representatives of
the CSU to take a clear stand. They were now able to set themselves apart from
parties they saw as guardians of political correctness. The CSU portrayed itself as a party that honestly addressed problems and was in touch with ordinary Germans and the realities of life in German cities and communities.22
The policy paper containing “Wer betrügt, der fliegt” was titled “Dort, wo
die Menschen wohnen: Die Belange der Kommunen zukunftsfest gestalten”
[“In the Places where People Live: Protecting Local Communities’ Sustainability”]. 11 days after the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s report, 56 CSU Bundestag
members came together at their annual retreat in the southern Bavarian
town of Wildbad Kreuth to adopt its recommendations and those of papers
on other policy fields. The paper is formulated very generally and contains
only a few of the details important for the legislative process and funding.
Three and a half pages long, it lists a variety of policy goals and the passage
about “poverty-driven migration” consists of just a single paragraph. According to the authors, the party was examining whether social-welfare benefits
could be suspended for the first three months of a person’s stay in Germany.
21 CSU-Landesgruppe, “Europas Zukunft: Freiheit, Sicherheit, Regionalität und Bürgernähe,“
8 January 2014, CSU conference in Wildbad Kreuth from 7 to 9 January 2014, www.csulandesgruppe.de/sites/default/files/uploads/kreuth-beschluss_2014_-_europas_zukunft_
freiheit_sicherheitregionalitaet_und_buergernaehe.pdf, 3; “Strategiepapier: CSU startet
Anti-Brüssel-Wahlkampf,” Spiegel Online, 29 December 2013, www.spiegel.de/politik/
ausland/csu-startet-anti-bruessel-wahlkampf-a-941108.html.
22 This argument was made by Gerda Hasselfeldt, chairwoman of the CSU’s parliamentary
group in the German Bundestag, in an interview: “Wer betrügt, der fliegt – das ist scharf,
aber richtig,” Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung, 16 August 2014, www.noz.de/deutschland-welt/
politik/artikel/498806/wer-betrugt-der-fliegt-das-ist-scharf-aber-richtig.
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Peter Widmann
In addition, the party wanted to make it possible to ban re-entry when documents had been falsified or benefits had been fraudulently collected. It was
here that the principle “cheat the system, get deported” applied.23
The slogan, which is found in the last part of the text, seems all the harsher
when seen in connection with the paper’s introduction, where the metaphor of
rootedness occurs twice. The second sentence reads “Local communities are
the places where people live, where they have their homes and roots.” Just two
sentences later comes “Bavaria is a successful federal state primarily because
the people living here are deeply rooted in their communities.”24 Against this
backdrop, immigrants appear rootless, and Roma the most rootless.
In media jargon, phrases such as “Wer betrügt, der fliegt” are called “sound
bites” — concise formulations that distill a message to its essence.25 Sound
bites are a tool used by speech-writers and the authors of position papers. Any
writer who has mastered the art of sound bites can influence which parts of a
text journalists quote and prevent them from expressing the message in their
own words. Ideally, the creators of sound bites determine headlines and journalists’ lead-ins. For journalists search for simple, boldly describable events to
cover, and a good sound bite makes a politician’s message so catchy that it becomes exactly that. Thus, a good sound bite gives journalists just what they
are looking for. The sound bite unites the interests of politicians and journalists, for both groups want attention — politicians for themselves and their
messages, journalists for their articles.
“Wer betrügt, der fliegt” was a particularly successful coinage. Journalists
and politicians cited it over and over, and it became the tendentious framing
of the debate on immigration from Southeastern Europe. It combines many of
the characteristics of a successful sound bite. It is compact, consisting of just
four words, three of which are monosyllabic. It also rhymes, if imperfectly. It
reduces complex legal, social, and political issues to a simple dictum. It suggests that the problem, the guilty parties, and the possible solutions are clear,
and it expresses determination and strength.
Thanks to its position paper, the CSU, which is a regional party, managed
to generate enough nationwide public pressure within just a few days’ time to
force the government to act. In early January 2014, Chancellor Angela Merkel
and Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, the chairman of the SPD, Merkel’s part23 CSU-Landesgruppe, “Dort, wo die Menschen wohnen: Die Belange der Kommunen zukunftsfest gestalten,” 7 January 2014, CSU conference in Wildbad Kreuth from 7 to 9 January 2014, accessed 29 March 2015, https://www.csu-landesgruppe.de/sites/default/files/
uploads/kreuth-beschluss_2014_-_die_belange_der_kommunen_zukunftsfest_gestalten.
pdf, 3 f.
24 Ibid., 1.
25 Jonathan Charteris-Black, Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Metaphor
(Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 5–6.
169
ner in the federal coalition, agreed to convene a committee of cabinet undersecretaries under the direction of the Interior and Labor Ministries to examine conditions in local communities and suggest solutions. The federal
cabinet officially established the committee on 8 January 2014 while members
of the CSU were still at their retreat in Kreuth.
Around six months later, on 27 August 2014, the federal cabinet adopted
the committee’s final report and introduced a bill based on it.26 The bill contained a number of provisions regarding freedom of movement, including
temporary bans on re-entry in the event of fraud or other violations of the law
as well as penalties for making false statements on applications for residence
permits. It also placed a six-month time limit on stays in Germany for the
purpose of looking for employment. Other provisions were designed to discourage under-the-table employment and prevent immigrants from applying
for child benefits in several places at the same time. The Bundestag passed the
bill as an amendment to the Freedom of Movement Act in November 2014,
and the German Federal Council (Bundesrat) followed suit three weeks later.
The most important regulations went into effect in December 2014.27
Agenda Setting
The CSU took this issue up in late 2013 not only because restrictions on
the freedom of movement of Romanians and Bulgarians were due to expire
soon but also because the party was facing two elections in the first half of
2014: the local elections in Bavaria in March and elections for the European
Parliament in May. The CSU had to position itself in the run-up, particularly
since it was competing with two other parties for the conservative vote. The
Free Voters (Freie Wähler) had become such a powerful force in Bavarian cities and towns that in many places they had broken the long undisputed dominance of the CSU. And, in 2013, the Alternative for Germany (Alternative für
Deutschland) — a right-wing populist party critical of the euro — began offering a political home to voters who felt that the Christian Democrats (CDU)
under Angela Merkel and their Bavarian sister party, the CSU, had drifted too
far to the center.
26 Press release of the Federal Interior Ministry, “Staatssekretärsausschuss: Kabinett beschließt
Abschlussbericht,” 27 August 2014, www.bmi.bund.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/
DE /2014/08/abschlussbericht-armutsmigration.html.
27 Press release of the German federal government, “Freizügigkeit ja, Sozialmissbrauch nein,”
8 December 2014, www.bundesregierung.de/Content/DE/Artikel/2014/08/2014–08–27freizuegigkeitsgesetz.html.
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Peter Widmann
In addition, the CSU faced a strategic challenge on the federal level. In the
Bundestag elections in October 2013, the coalition of the CDU, the CSU, and
the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP) had failed to win a majority. As a result, Chancellor Angela Merkel formed a grand coalition with
the Social Democrats. The CSU was also a part of this coalition, but the government no longer needed it to ensure its majority. The party therefore lost
influence. In the previous CDU/CSU-FDP coalition, the Interior Minister
had been a member of the CSU, but when the federal cabinet was reshuffled
in December 2013 the party did not receive a single important ministry. It
had to settle for the Ministries of Agriculture, Transport, and Development.
The German media painted the CSU as the loser of the coalition’s negotiations. With its focus on poverty-driven migration, the party attempted to
reverse its dwindling importance and show that it was still capable of setting the agenda. The official name of the January 2014 retreat in Kreuth was
therefore “The CSU Is Setting the Pace for the Grand Coalition.”28 Against
this backdrop, putting immigration on the federal government’s agenda
and initiating an amendment to the law was an important achievement for
the CSU.
From the CSU’s perspective, their self-presentation strategy was a success, but it provoked criticism from more than just the other political parties
in Germany. Migration researchers and social-welfare organizations pointed
out that the CSU’s claims had no empirical basis. In response to the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s coverage of the party’s policy paper, many articles cited
studies and reports that showed that immigrants from Bulgaria and Romania were not placing an excessive burden on the German social-welfare system and were not expected to do so in the future.29 The authors of these studies worked for various institutions, including the Bonn Institute for the Study
of Labor, the Berlin Institute for Employment Research, the Expert Council of
German Foundations on Integration and Migration, and the European Commission. When the German Interior Minister, Thomas de Maizière (CDU),
presented the final report of the committee of cabinet undersecretaries at a
press conference in August 2014, he emphasized that, despite the problems in
some localities, poverty-driven immigration was not a widespread phenomenon in Germany. According to de Maizière, the government had responded
28 CSU regional group, “Die CSU-Landesgruppe ist Taktgeber der Großen Koalition,” CSU
conference in Wildbad Kreuth from 7 to 9 January 2014, accessed 27 March 2015, www.
csu-landesgruppe.de/sites/default/files/uploads/bericht_aus_kreuth_2014.pdf.
29 For example, Daniel Bax, “Von wegen Armutsmigration,” tageszeitung, 28 December 2013,
www.taz.de/!130016/; Jannis Brühl and Kathrin Haimerl, “Mythos Armutsmigration,”
Süddeutsche Zeitung, 3 January 2015, www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/einwanderer-ausosteuropa-mythos-armutsmigration-1.1854451.
171
to these problems by amending the law and making federal funds available to
the affected communities.30
Many observers regarded the amendment as a symbolic act whose regulations had little practical relevance.31 In August 2014, the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung offered its verdict: the CSU had “failed miserably”
in drafting the new law. Because of the provisions of European law, bans on
re-entry could be imposed only in narrowly defined cases, and it was almost
impossible to limit the legal right to the child benefit.32 From the CSU’s perspective, therefore, the results were mixed. On the one hand, it had increased
its visibility. For voters who were suspicious of immigration, the CSU had
managed to position itself as a political force that aimed to ensure controlled
immigration even within the framework of the European common market.
At the same time, though, many Germans could easily see through the party’s
strategy and see that its claims were not justified by the facts.
Dilemmas
The debate on poverty-driven immigration was in fact a debate on the political, economic, and social consequences of European integration, even if politicians and journalists failed to discuss this fact in any great detail. Those aspects
of the EU that many in the population regarded as progressive — the common
market; the associated freedom of movement; the opportunity to study, work,
and conduct business throughout Europe — were seen by others as a threatening abandonment of national control, security, and traditions. From this
perspective, Roma embodied the threatening dissolution of national borders.
As empirical political sociology has shown, globalization, Europeanization, and the declining importance of national borders in European societies
have produced both winners and losers.33 The winners are the well-educated
30 An audio recording of the press conference on 27 August 2014 can be found on the
Federal Interior Ministry’s website, accessed 26 March 2015, www.bmi.bund.de/Shared
Docs/Pressemitteilungen/DE/2014/08/abschlussbericht-armutsmigration.html.
31 For the legal perspective, see Hannah Tewocht and Gabriele Buchholtz, “Kampf der
‘Armutsmigration’ oder: Wie aus einer Stammtischparole ein Gesetz wurde,“ Junge Wissenschaft im Öffentlichen Recht, 1 October 2014, www.juwiss.de/119–2014/.
32 Thomas Gutschker, “Wer betrügt, der fliegt noch lange nicht,” Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung, 24 August 2014, www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/missbrauch-von-sozialleis
tungen-wer-betruegt-der-fliegt-noch-lange-nicht-13113184.html.
33 This is one of the central findings of the research group led by Hanspeter Kriesi and
Edgar Grande. Cf. Hanspeter Kriesi et al., eds., West European Politics in the Age of Globalization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Hanspeter Kriesi et al., Political Conflict in Western Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
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Peter Widmann
Europeans who speak foreign languages; are young, healthy, and mobile; and
can take advantage of the freedoms of the common market. People with less
education, who can communicate only in their mother tongues, or who due
to their age or personal circumstances are tied to their home regions are more
likely to be among the losers or to fear that they will become losers and move
down the social ladder. These people have experienced the fading of the nation-state as a loss. They have generally found it more difficult than in past
decades to do well on the labor market. At the same time, the social safety net
has frayed. This division into winners and losers of denationalization is one of
the defining conflicts of our time.34
This development has presented catch-all parties with a special challenge
because they depend on bringing together members and voters from various
strata of society. Today this means bringing together the winners and losers
of the new political and economic order. Smaller parties can attract members
and voters from one group. They can speak to the winners of denationalization and support the new freedoms and cultural diversity, as the Greens and
the FDP do. Or they can side with the losers and defend the nation (like rightwing populist parties do) or the welfare state (like the Left Party does).
This strategy is not feasible for catch-all parties. The CDU/CSU has faced a
special challenge because it has been involved in shaping the European unification process since the 1950s. Since then, the common market and the
single currency have been planks in their platform. The party cannot consistently oppose the free movement of people as that is fundamental to the
common market. Given this situation, the CSU decided to use as its strategic instrument the rhetoric of controlling Germany’s borders, of home, and
of protecting the native. In terms of specific laws and measures, this rhetoric has had, at best, a limited effect, but it signals to voters that the party understands and represents their need for security. The CSU apparently does not
care whether its rhetoric worsens the social climate and revives stereotypes
about certain population groups.
In this context, journalistic efforts to educate the populace confront two
limitations. The first results from the established norms of journalism. As the
coverage of immigration from Romania and Bulgaria shows, many journalists were aware of traditional stereotypes and of politicians’ communication
strategies. For example, many cited statistics and studies that showed that the
34 Often the politicians and authors who address the fear of losing social status are members of the elite, as the leaders of right-wing populist parties and authors such as Thilo
Sarrazin show. However, the data analyzed by Kriesi et al. demonstrate that in Western
European societies a clear link exists between the susceptibility to right-wing populist
and neo-nationalist messages, on the one hand, and social characteristics, such as formal
education and position on the labor market, on the other.
173
fears, which the widespread immigration horror stories provoked, had no empirical basis. And, a variety of articles analyzed the CSU’s election strategy.
In an age, however, when politics is increasingly shaped by the mass media, political actors know how to use the media’s norms to benefit their own
campaigns. An important factor in their manipulation of the press is the selection of campaign issues: clearly defined conflicts that arouse strong emotions have a high news value and make headlines. Thus, by following the established journalistic norms for deciding which issues to cover, even critical
journalists can become part of the show that skilful populist politicians or
their spin doctors stage. The same can happen when journalists employ established modes of representation, such as episodic framing with its implicit
claim to describe examples of wider phenomena. After all, journalists can
exert only minimal influence on the norms of their profession. They learn
in journalism school, and also from their colleagues, to make abstract ideas
come alive through anecdotes. In the process, they create types, which are often stereotypes, such as the overwhelmed individual living next door to a shelter for immigrants and the lower-class person who is trying to escape hardship. The susceptibility of many journalists to sound bites is also the result of
established professional routines. In all of these ways, journalistic norms can
hinder journalists’ efforts to expose the strategies of populist politicians.
Contemporary social conflicts and the growing division of European societies faced with globalization, Europeanization, and denationalization illustrate the second limitation. Not even conscientious reporting can lessen
the susceptibility of some members of society to certain political messages.
What is at stake for the political actors who profit by addressing the losers
and the fearful is, above all, visibility. Thus, even negative coverage can be
advantageous.
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Abstract
Die öffentliche Debatte um »Armutsmigration« in Deutschland der Jahre
2013/14 belebte traditionelle Stereotype über Roma neu. In vielen auf einem
episodischen Framing fußenden Presseberichten erschienen Roma aus Bulgarien und Rumänien als nicht integrierbare Gruppe. Ein Teil der Berichte legte
dabei nahe, dass anekdotische Schilderungen über Roma, die in deutschen
Städten in verwahrlosten Umständen lebten, ein deutschlandweites Phänomen spiegelten. Mechanismen der Themenselektion sorgten gleichzeitig dafür, dass Roma in den Berichten ausschließlich im Zusammenhang sozialer
Missstände auftraten. In dieser Situation nutzte die Christlich Soziale Union,
der bayerische Ableger der deutschen Christdemokraten, Instrumente strategischer politischer Kommunikation zum erfolgreichen agenda setting, um sich
gegenüber Konkurrenten im konservativen Teil des politischen Spektrums zu
176
Peter Widmann
behaupten. Die Fallstudie identifiziert Grenzen journalistischer Aufklärung
gegenüber solchen Kommunikationsstrategien. Die Grenzen resultieren sowohl aus etablierten journalistischen Routinen als auch aus der gesellschaftlichen Konfliktlinie zwischen Gewinnern und Verlierern einer Denationalisierung, deren Teil der europäische Binnenmarkt und die damit verbundene
Personenfreizügigkeit ist.
Dr. Peter Widmann is a political scientist and the coordinator of the project Marburg
International Doctorate at the Philipps-Universiät Marburg. He studied political science at the Freie Universität Berlin; at the Center for Research on Antisemitism of
the Technische Universität Berlin, he completed his doctorate on the topic of municipal policy toward Sinti and Roma in the Federal Republic of Germany. He was
assistant professor at the Center for Research on Antisemitism and has undertaken
political-science teaching assignments at the TU Berlin. From 2010 to 2015 he was a
lecturer for political science of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) at
Istanbul Bilgi University. His areas of emphasis in teaching and research are political
sociology and political communication.
Georg Ruhrmann
Integration in the Media
Between Science, Policy Consulting, and Journalism
It is early 2015 in Germany. Right-wing populists’ arguments concerning asylum, refugees, and immigration are increasingly gaining public attention,
and right-wing populist parties throughout Europe are attracting more and
more disappointed citizens.1 Thorough, systematic analyses of the social and
political processes underlying these phenomena have long appeared to be of
no particular interest, at least not to party politics. An adequate understanding of integration requires an understanding of the concept of integration,
which, in turn, requires the findings of basic research worked out over the last
two decades. Applied social science and policy advice require the same, for
both attempt to describe and implement integration on the basis of plausible
assumptions without sound scientific understanding.
At the same time, politicians claim that they can determine (without further
ado) which sorts of immigrants have become integrated, and how well, into
German society. Consequently, they attempt to determine who should be integrated into our society, and how, when, and where. Since the 1980s, that sort
of attitude has become firmly established in right-wing populist discourse in
the United States, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe. Thus, one hears claims
that, for example, certain demographic groups or ethnicities cannot be integrated, a position that is gaining popularity and increasingly wide approval.2
In this article, I start by examining some of the dimensions of the concept integration (part 1). I then consider certain types of media coverage,
their characteristics, and the contact that they establish between majority and
1 See Britta Schellenberg, “Developments within the Radical Right in Germany: Discourses,
Attitudes and Actors,” in Right-Wing Populism in Europe: Politics and Discourse, ed. Ruth
Wodak et al. (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 149–162 and Timo Lochocki, “Countering
Right-Wing Populism: The AFD and the Strategic Dilemma for Germany’s Moderate Parties,” The German Marshall Fund Policy Briefs 2, no. 1 (2015).
2 See Elizabeth Anderson, The Imperative of Integration (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2010); Claudia Posch et al., “German Postwar Discourse of the Extreme and Populist
Right,” in Analysing Fascist Discourse: European Fascism in Talk and Text, eds. Ruth
Wodak and John E. Richardson (New York: Routledge, 2013), 97–122; and Paul Collier,
Exodus: Immigration and Multiculturalism in the 21st Century (London: Penguin, 2013).
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Georg Ruhrmann
minority groups, a subject that has long been discussed by social psychologists (part 2). Finally, I critically examine the relationships among research,
policy advice, and journalism and indicate how the media present and evaluate scientific studies (part 3). In conclusion, I summarize my findings as issues
and questions for further discussion (part 4).
1.
Disintegration: Dimensions and Debates
The term integration describes a long-term, dynamic, social process that occurs on different levels. Integration brings together social groups with different values and lets them grow together. The host society, which is usually only
rudimentarily multicultural, often excludes immigrant groups in many ways
and for a number of reasons.3 Immigrants frequently live within the cultural
context of their society of origin.
On the other hand disintegration describes the processes and situations in
which social bonds erode and become weaker. Social processes of fragmentation and disintegration begin and produce a decrease in solidarity among
groups and, eventually, a shared loss of meaning that manifests itself in intergroup tensions and hostilities, which can lead to political and economic
instability. Such conflicts can also emerge in societies with a long tradition of
ethnic tolerance and integration. They are apparent in social discourses and
political controversies and, later, in social unrest, demonstrations, and sudden eruptions of violence. Media coverage is topical, event-related, and short
term. It does not explain the social causes of disintegration, which include the
fact that many groups depending on welfare benefits are forced to live in continuous poverty and involuntarily and inevitably reproduce these increasingly precarious conditions.4 Particularly high unemployment rates bring
about and reinforce such poverty, and in regions of high unemployment, especially, one observes greater than average discrimination. People with immigrant backgrounds excluded from employment opportunities are denied the
resources that are made available as a matter of course to members of the majority society.5
3 See Anthony Heath et al., The Political Integration of Ethnic Minorities in Britain (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
4 See Klaus Dörre, Stephan Lessenich, and Hartmut Rosa, Sociology, Capitalism, Critique,
trans. Jan-Peter Herrmann and Loren Balhorn (London: Verso, 2015) and Mike Cole,
Racism. A Critical Analysis (London: Pluto Press 2015).
5 See Anthony Giddens, Sociology (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006) and Alice Goffman, On
the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).
179
Largely unnoticed in political and journalistic discourse, social scientists
differentiate two concepts of integration: social integration and system integration. Social integration is used especially with respect to individuals
(e.g., with immigrant backgrounds) and groups. Scientific research, both theoretical and empirical, into social integration seeks to explain how individuals and groups perceive themselves in society, how they communicate, and
whether, and if so how, they organize themselves.6 With respect to migration,
the concept of social integration is further refined to include structural integration, the aspects of which pertain to access to jobs and resources, such
as material goods, labor income (wages), and inherited assets (capital), all
of which are relevant to a dramatically increasing social inequality. Current
economic data from the United States, England, Canada, France, Germany,
Sweden, and Japan clearly confirm this development.7
An essential aspect of structural integration, long neglected by politicians
and journalists, is language, i.e, the language competence that immigrants
have or will acquire. Cognitive and social psychologists have acquired complex theoretical and empirical insights about the links between communication, intergroup relations, and social discrimination.8
Social scientists also study how natives and immigrants coexist, in cities,
towns, and rural areas, in everyday life as well as the conditions under which
social integration is perceived as successful, that is, when groups within the
immigrant and host society mutually accept one another not only at work, but
also within the family and in private spheres. Such acceptance can allow the
development of new feelings of belonging.
System integration, the second concept, applies to the cohesion of social
subsystems, such as the economic, legal, and media subsystems.9 System integration cannot be observed directly or grasped by journalistic terms; it must
be investigated analytically.
Public and political debates about integration consider it from an overly
narrow perspective, namely, as a challenge for immigrants. From the perspective of social science, however, every member of a society works constantly to
secure his or her own integration (for example, on the labor market).
6 See Joseph B. Atkins, Covering for the Bosses: Labor and the Southern Press (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008).
7 See Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge: The Belknap Press
of Harvard University Press, 2014), 304–335, 377–470.
8 Regarding different perspectives, see Daniel Wigboldus and Karen Douglas, “Language,
Stereotypes and Intergroup Relations,” in Social Communication, ed. Klaus Fiedler (New
York: Psychology Press, 2007), 79–107 and Teun A. van Dijk, Discourse and Knowledge:
A Sociocognitive Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 139–167.
9 See Margaret Archer, “Social Integration and System Integration,” Sociology 30 (1996):
679–699.
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Georg Ruhrmann
In times of intensified social or economic crisis, a weakening connection
between social and system integration can become a dominant and topical
political and, thus also media, subject. During the recent financial crises, for
example, public controversies over refugee policies and European integration reached a fever pitch.10 Nevertheless, the “achievements and effects of integration” of the media are rarely mentioned in political discourse. Instead,
politicians loudly express moralizing attitudes, as, for example, that “the”
journalists and “the” media need to report on immigration and integration in
appropriate, balanced, and objective ways. Journalists in general face the accusation of deliberately stirring up, and even creating prejudices against immigrants, and with this accusation comes the presumption that such reporting reinforces stereotypes among “the” society.
Press, radio, television, and, increasingly, the Internet are considered to be
both causes of and media for advancing social disintegration. What does research on this subject show?
2. Media Representations of Immigrants:
Structures and Types
The issues in the public discourse and media coverage of Germany’s integration policies, which were introduced only 10 years ago, are equal treatment,
equal opportunities and access to education and training, and a fair share of
material and immaterial goods for immigrants. Empirical media analyses
ascertain the topics and actors presented. Systematic media-content analyses reveal strongly negative media images of immigrants distorted by stereotypes. These images can reinforce the xenophobic attitudes of different social
groups.11
10 See Immanuel Wallerstein et al., Does Capitalism Have a Future? (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2013) and Claus Offe, Europe Entrapped (Cambridge: Polity Press,
2015).
11 See Georg Ruhrmann, “The Stranger: Minorities and Their Treatment in German Media,”
in The Mission: Journalism, Ethics and the World, ed. Joseph B. Atkins (Ames: Iowa State
University Press, 2002), 79–90; Daniel Geschke et al., “Effects of Linguistic Abstractness
in the Mass Media: How Newspaper Articles Shape Readers’ Attitudes toward Migrants,”
Journal of Media Psychology 22, no. 3 (2010): 99–104; Teun A. van Dijk, “The Role of the
Press in the Reproduction of Racism,” in Migrations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, eds.
Michi Messer, Renee Schroeder, and Ruth Wodak (Vienna: Springer, 2012), 15–29; and
Cole, “Racism. A Critical Analysis”, 50–67.
181
Structures and Types of Television News Reporting
on Immigration
Since systematic television studies are complex and time-consuming, especially if they seek to illuminate the conditions of production of ethnically relevant content, there are only a few studies of the presentation of immigrants
on television news.12 These show that worldwide reporting on immigrants is
especially frequent when the subject is crime. Television news reports shed
light solely on isolated aspects of disintegration, e.g., juvenile crime, violence
against women, and fundamentalist activities, and these give the impression
that certain groups simply cannot be integrated.13
Since the early 1980s, the frequency with which German media mention
certain nationalities has correlated with the negativity of their assessment.
Turkish actors, and, increasingly, those labeled “Muslim,”14 are both overrepresented in the media and disproportionately shown in connection with
escalating controversies, conflicts, and violence.15
Journalists orient themselves, with an eye toward the economic and political
elite, around the mainstream media. On this basis, one can distinguish different
typical criteria of story selection and types of coverage. The factors of negativity, controversy, aggression, and damage appear relatively often in news reporting.16 As for the factors of influence and prominence, journalists have for decades presented images of “foreigners” and people with immigrant backgrounds
who both lack influence. More frequently, journalists describe such people as
objects, that is, as the passive recipients of the effects of events, not as communicative or political agents of them. For example, immigrants are interviewed
as objects and their reactions to events are predicted and evaluated as those of
objects. In general, one can observe in television news a greater frequency of reporting on politically passive immigrants than on the politically active. Certain
12 See Debra M. Clarke, Journalism and Political Exclusion: Social Conditions of News
Production and Reception (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014).
13 See Rodney Benson, Shaping Immigration News: A French-American Comparison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
14 On the shift in discourse on immigration policies, in the course of which guest workers
and later Turks increasingly became Muslims, see Riem Spielhaus, “Religion und Identität. Vom deutschen Versuch, ‘Ausländer’ zu ‘Muslimen’ zu machen,” Internationale
Politik (March 2006): 28–36 and Yasemin Shooman, “… weil ihre Kultur so ist.” Narrative
des antimuslimischen Rassismus (Bielefeld: transcript, 2014), 37–40.
15 See Georg Ruhrmann and Denise Sommer, “Migranten in den Medien – von der Ignoranz zum Kontakt?,” Zeitschrift für Ausländerrecht und Ausländerpolitik 25, no. 3–4 (2005):
123–127.
16 See Denise Sommer and Georg Ruhrmann, “Oughts and Ideals: Framing People with Migration Background in TV News,” conflict and communication online 9, no. 2 (2010): 1–15.
http://www.cco.regener-online.de/2010_2/pdf/sommer_ruhrmann.pdf.
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kinds of key events, such as xenophobic attacks, change the interpretive framework of news coverage, which can take thematic, episodic, or other forms.17
Episodic frames depict concrete individuals and single actions and describe
conflicts in terms of acts of violence. The journalistic construction of episodic
frames needs telling images and film sequences, which, consequently, are produced or acquired under maximum competition and time pressure.
Thematic frames present immigration more abstractly, though they do explain the causes of economic and social developments and discuss the political consequences of decisions. Thus, thematic framing does not reduce immigration conflicts to aggressive behavior illustrated with spectacular images
of violence. Instead, it presents them as the results of the unresolved (or unresolvable) opposition of economic, political, and social interests and interprets them accordingly. In both the United States and Germany, episodic
frames predominate in television news coverage: approximately 80 percent of TV news stories are episodic, and only 20 percent are thematically
framed.18
As experiments have shown, different forms of framing lead audiences to
make different judgments about immigration and integration. Viewers of thematically framed news stories expect complex conditions as a basis for political decisions and assign responsibility to collectively organized agents. Viewers of episodically framed reporting, however, tend toward simple causal
explanations and attributions of responsibility to individuals.19
Analyzing television news coverage of immigration and disintegration in
terms of a number of formal and content characteristics and then classifying individual stories for cluster analysis reveals various types of news stories (fig. 1).
The types can be arrayed on a two-dimensional coordinate system. Along
the y-axis, TV news stories are arranged according to the aggressiveness of the
behavior of the immigrants they portray. Along the x-axis, stories run from
lesser to greater newsworthiness. The position (rank) and duration of a message, as revealed by content analysis, determines newsworthiness.20
Type 1 news coverage focuses largely on crime and portrays immigrants
sensationalistically. Private, commercial television stations in Germany favor
this episodically framed type of news coverage. Type 2 stories, which occur
17 See Shanto Iyengar, “Framing Responsibility for Political Issues,” Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science 546 (1996): 59–70.
18 See Sommer and Ruhrmann, “Oughts and Ideals,” 1–15.
19 See Denise Sommer, “Framing und Kontaktinformation in der Rezeption,” in Georg
Ruhrmann et al., Medienrezeption in der Einwanderungsgesellschaft. Eine vergleichende
Studie zur Wirkung von TV-Nachrichten (Mainz: MASGFF, 2007), 70–72 and Van Dijk,
Discourse and Knowledge, 143–145.
20 See Sommer and Ruhrmann, “Oughts and Ideals,” 8–9.
183
Dimension 1: Aggression (y-axis)
Type 1
“Crime”
Type 4
“Terrorism Risk”
Type 3
“Cultural Proximity”
Type 2
“Integration Policy”
Dimension 2: Newsworthiness (x-axis)
Fig. 1: Types of German TV News Reporting on Immigration.
(Based on Sommer and Ruhrmann, “Oughts and Ideals”)
more seldom, cover the political background of immigration and integration
policies. This thematically framed coverage explains the events and developments it describes. Relatively frequent Type 3 stories cover the extent of cultural similarity between the host society and the immigrant groups or individuals portrayed. Type 3 stories are episodically framed news-in-brief and
tend to be about nonpolitical events of low newsworthiness (as measured
along the x-axis) involving less conflict or aggression (as measured along
the y-axis), for example, a story on the successes of Turkish businessmen in
Germany. Type 4 stories report on the “terrorism risk” that a journalist associates with the events covered. Sensationalized type 4 stories (with high
x-values) personalize the terroristic behavior (with high y-values) they attributed to immigrants.21
21 Ibid. See also Georg Ruhrmann, “Schwankendes Terrain. Die Risiken der Risikoberichterstattung” in Organisierte Phantasie. Medienwelten im 21. Jahrhundert – 30 Positionen,
eds. Jochen Hörisch and Uwe Kammann (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, Grimme Institut),
84–91. Some journalists individualize the current terrorism: “The terrorists have struck
in Paris, products are of our societies” and “foreigners inevitably form the most loyal,
docile troop of IS ,” Der Spiegel, no. 49 (2015), 14, 19.
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In sum, these four types of television news coverage of people with immigrant backgrounds constitute different journalistic strategies for representing integrative and disintegrative aspects of immigration. At the same time,
they depict different long-term, social and political patterns of discourse in
Germany. Since they deal with the subjects of immigration, integration, and
disintegration in very different ways, one cannot speak of the journalists or
the news media.
On the Role of Contact Shown in the Media
(Parasocial Contact Hypothesis)
For some time, social psychologists have discussed the role that contact between minorities and majorities plays in integration. Studies in communications and social psychology have shown that the media’s reporting can create a type of media or virtual contact, whose impact is similar to that of real,
interpersonal contact.22 This finding is significant for rural regions where,
studies of central and eastern Germany show, immigrants and native-born
Germans have less real contact with one another.23 As with other findings of
social scientific research, however, participants in the current political debate
are only beginning to take it into account. (I’ll take this up in part 4.)
Contact can decrease prejudice when members of the different groups in
contact have approximately equal status and cooperate in their pursuit of
common goals.24 The content and quantity of television that a person watches
influences how the person evaluates natives and immigrants. When television
portrays immigrants in contact with members of the host society, viewers
tend to assess them more positively. The same is true for television news: when
it explicitly shows contact25 between natives and immigrants, viewers sometimes evaluate the immigrants portrayed more positively than when no contact is shown.26 Reporting that depicts such contact also includes significantly
less violence than reporting that does not.
22 See Edward Schiappa, Peter B. Gregg, and Dean E. Hewes, “The Parasocial Contact Hypothesis,” Communication Monographs 72, no. 1 (2005): 92–115.
23 See Ulrich Wagner et al., “Ethnic Prejudice in East and West Germany,” Group Processes
& Intergroup Relations 6, no. 1 (2003): 22–36.
24 See Schiappa et al., “The Parasocial Contact Hypothesis.”
25 See Gordon W. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (New York: Perseus Book, 1954), 262–281;
see also Thomas F. Pettigrew and Linda R. Tropp, “A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup
Contact Theory,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90, no. 5 (2006): 751–783.
26 See Sommer, “Framing und Kontaktinformation” and Gunnar Lenner, Meta-Analytic
Evaluations of Interventions to Improve Ethnic Attitudes (Marburg: Philipps-Universität
Marburg, 2011).
185
This phenomenon, especially as it occurs on the Internet, calls for further
research if we are to understand it sufficiently to be able to use it to shape and
change perceptions of immigrants. The processes of technologizing and commercializing social connections and their effects also need further research.
Social psychology and communication studies address themselves more and
more to questions of personal identity, interpersonal relationships, and how
in- and out-group status is communicated.27
3. Between Science, Policy Advice,
and Journalism in Germany
In this section, I discuss the extent to which policy advice considering immigration takes into account the role of the media in dealing with the results of
basic social science research. In an excursus, I introduce some of the forms
and criteria of social scientific research. I then discuss how the news both covers and ignores them.
Science and the Role of the Media
Studies of disintegration, xenophobia, and right-wing extremism often consider the role of the media but usually only take very general statements about
media content and its impact into account. They seldom consider the findings
of systematic observations and surveys of journalists, qualitative or quantitative content analyses, or experiments on viewers employing subtly discriminatory images and texts.
The results of discourse-analytical research on disintegration and discrimination in a larger, more complex context have hardly any influence on political decision-making. Policy advisers mostly ignore the causes of structural
economic and social inequality. The dynamics and distributions of power are
general not analyzed, but at most interpreted in a moralizing manner. Only
informed political elites show an interest in their effects and consequences.
More and more, public relations replaces political discussion, and, consequently, politicians prefer the results of applied research conducted on behalf of the PR agendas they aim at particular target groups. In the wake of
27 See José van Dijck, The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 3–5, 68–70 and Howard Gardner and Katie Davis,
The App Generation: How Today’s Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy, and Imagination
in a Digital World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 45–67.
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Georg Ruhrmann
xenophobic attacks, civil society organizes candlelight vigils and marches,
and corresponding pictures are broadcast around the world on television.
But, a serious political discussion of integration and disintegration is only just
beginning.
The media do not systematically process and disseminate the results of
social science research and trans-national and cross-cultural comparative
studies that are relevant to immigration policy. When they do, they do not reliably disclose the information that ensures that common criteria for the objectivity of research have been satisfied, things like the research’s sponsors,
its investigators’ financial relationships with them, and the contractors it employs. And they often only vaguely describe the objectives of studies or the hypotheses being tested. For these and other reasons, the public, and often the
politicians themselves, knows little about the implementation of scientific results in political decisions. Relevant questions that remain unasked include: Is
this an applied study or basic academic research? How are data collected and
surveys given? Are methods chosen on the basis of theory and, if so, what is
the basis? Are samples representative?
Politicians and policy advisers are frequently not interested in the methodology of social scientific research on the integration of immigrants and
minorities or its lack. However, it is important that they become interested if scientific research is to be instrumentalized as a basis for political
decisions.28
Excursus: Evidence and the Quality of Scientific Studies
Although the role of research in evidence-based political decision-making has
been studied for more than 20 years, German decision-makers are only now
beginning to appreciate the importance of at least international research.29 In
the current debate over immigration and integration, however, its findings
28 Roger A. Pielke, Jr., “Lessons from 50 Years of Science Advice to the US President,” in
Wissenschaftliche Politikberatung im Praxistest, eds. Peter Weingart and Gert G. Wagner
(Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft, 2015), 51–66. For a critical social-theory perspective, see Colin Crouch, The Knowledge Corrupters: Hidden Consequences of the Financial
Takeover of Public Life (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015).
29 See Nancy Cartwright and Jeremy Hardie, Evidence-based Policy: A Practical Guide To
Do It Better (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); John D. Brewer, The Public Value
of the Social Sciences: An Interpretative Essay (London: Bloomsbury, 2013); and Simon
Bastow, Patrick Dunleavy, and Jane Tinkler, The Impact of the Social Sciences: How Academics and Their Research Make a Difference (Los Angeles and London: Sage, 2014);
see also Credible and Actionable Evidence: The Foundation for Rigorous and Influential
Evaluations, eds. Stewart L. Donaldson, Christina A. Christie, and Melvin M. Mark (Los
Angeles and London: Sage, 2015).
187
quickly fade into the background. Instead, “scientific court purveyors”30 summarize the results of complicated social science research (and sometimes its
methodology) in ways that political ministers, department heads, and undersecretaries can understand.31 Politicians and policymakers rarely consider the
scientific evidence or the criteria for the quality of research.
Research quality is ranked hierarchically, and a study’s place in the hierarchy is taken to determine the validity of research methodology and the reliability of its findings.32 At the top are studies that have undergone systematic
peer review, in which reviewers evaluate a study’s design, investigators’ understanding of the relevant scientific literature, the quality of the resulting data,
the appropriateness of the statistical analyses, and the validity of the conclusions drawn. At the next level come diligent reviews of scientific literature and
meta-analyses of empirical studies. Such reviews are common in medicine
and academic psychology.33 Next come cohort studies, which can be based on
longitudinal studies. Next are surveys and descriptive studies, which are considered less probative. Finally, single-case studies and informal expert opinions are considered to be the least authoritative from a scientific point of view.
It is important to realize that a study’s place in the hierarchy of scientific evidence is not the same as its degree of scientific (or political) relevance.
Qualitative investigations; single, pilot, and case studies; and influential essays can stimulate continued research and political discussion and controversy. This has been increasingly the case in recent years for both substantial
immigration research and research summaries and essays on immigration.34
Journalists use the latter to find orientation, which accentuates their political
significance and effect on the public discussion. This raises the question of
how journalists deal with conflicting or controversial evidence.
30 Mirella Schütz-Ierace, Von geheimen Politikmachern und wissenschaftlichen Hoflieferanten.
Wissenschaftliches Wissen in der Politikberichterstattung (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, 2010).
31 For a critical, systematic, and more fundamental discussion, see Martina Franzen, Peter
Weingart, and Simone Rödder, “Exploring the Impact of Science Communication on Scientific Knowledge Production: An Introduction,” in The Sciences’ Media Connection –
Public Communication and its Repercussions, eds. Simone Rödder, Martina Franzen, and
Peter Weingart (Dordrecht: Springer, 2012), 3–16.
32 See Julia H. Littell, Jacqueline Corcoran, and Vijayan Pillai, Systematic Review and MetaAnalysis (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
33 See Wagner et al., “Ethnic Prejudice”; Schiappa, Gregg, and Hewes, “The Parasocial
Contact Hypothesis”; and Andreas Beelmann, “Möglichkeiten und Grenzen systematischer Evidenzakkumulation durch Forschungssynthese in der Bildungsforschung,” in
Von der Forschung zur evidenzbasierten Entscheidung. Die Darstellung und das öffentliche
Verständnis empirischer Bildungsforschung, eds. Rainer Bromme and Manfred Prenzel
(Wiesbaden: Springer/VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2014), 55–78.
34 See Collier, Exodus; Schellenberg, “Developments”; and Klaus J. Bade, Gewalt und Kritik:
Sarrazin-Debatte, “Islamkritik” und Terror in der Einwanderungsgesellschaft (Schwalbach:
Wochenschau Verlag, 2013).
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Georg Ruhrmann
Scientific Evidence and Distorted News Coverage
Journalists increasingly report on scientific studies of immigration and integration. At the same time, however, the scientists who conduct those studies
notice that media coverage is often summary and frequently focuses on isolated or sensational findings taken out of their context. Critical studies also
show that the media sometimes present the complex findings of social science
research in distorted or incomplete ways and, in particular, fail to consider the
addressed epistemological dimensions.35 Journalists often are not interested
in theoretical and methodological advances or are they sensitive to the fragility of new evidence based on these findings. Instead, they select for coverage
isolated aspects or single cases that are spectacular or especially relevant to
the public’s interests. These can then easily be used in immigration-policy
controversies as alleged proof of politically motivated positions. Journalists
justify their selections in terms of their obligation to inform the public or the
legitimacy of following up on the earlier reporting of their colleagues, who report on scientific research in a similar manner. Figure 2 illustrates how this
happens.
Scientific studies from all levels of the evidence hierarchy are subject to
common journalistic selection criteria and strategies. These include gatekeeping, news factors, news frames, and news biases. Coverage depends, in the
first place, on the feasibility of a study’s subject matter as a story, which includes the quick availability of images and text and the study’s fit into established journalistic forms. For example, journalists seek objectivity and balance in the form of points and counterpoints. A study’s evaluation of practical
opportunities and risks are also relevant. (See fig. 2.)36 But, journalists do not
then simply describe actual studies. Instead, they select interesting aspects
and details in accord with sound journalistic practice. (See the top of fig. 2.)
Journalistic selection criteria include a study’s innovativeness, its political and
social relevance, its problems and risks for the population that it addresses,
and the social or economic benefit of its results.
The immigration-policy debate in Germany offers several examples of
these in the forms of appeals, manifestos, and disputes among experts. These
35 See Martyn Hammerley, Media Bias in Reporting Social Research? The Case of Reviewing Ethnic Inequalities in Education (New York: Routledge, 2006), 135–155 and Sharon
Dunwoody, “Journalistic Practice and Coverage of the Behavioral and Social Science,”
in Handbook on Communicating and Disseminating Behavioral Science, eds. Melissa
L. Welch-Ross and Lauren G. Fasig (Los Angeles and London: Sage, 2007), 57–72.
36 Georg Ruhrmann and Lars Guenther, “Risk communication,” in Oxford Bibliographies
(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); http://www.oxfordbibliographies.
com/view/document/obo-9780199756841/obo-9780199756841–0156.xml (accessed 21 July
2015).
189
Journalism
Science
Studies
Selection of Studies
1) Deskriptive
Studies,
»narrative
summaries«
3) MetaAnalyses
2) Empirical
Research
4) Systematic
Review (Discussion of scientific
evidence)
Topicality
News Reporting
Benefit
Subject
Corresponding Actors
Ad 1) Media
Companies,
Political Parties,
Policy Consulting
Ad 3)
Foundations,
Researchers
(Basic Research)
Feasibility
Context
Objectivity
Balance
Risk
Relevance
Selection of Actors
Status
Influence
Standing
Ad 2) FoundAd 4) Academic
ations, Research- Researchers
ers (Applied
(Basic Research)
Research)
Prominence
Success
Fig. 2: Selection Criteria for Coverage of Scientific Studies.
are what prompt journalistic attention and subsequent news coverage. Journalists present conflicting scientific evidence, which is expected and normal,
as evidence of controversy. Such coverage almost always ignores the studies’
scientific background and the quality of their designs and results, i. e., their
contexts of discovery and justification. At most, journalists attend to epistemological issue by questioning the objectivity of researchers and sponsors
and the representativeness of the sampling that researchers report. Currently,
daily reporting in Germany does not cover meta-analyses, or even international systematic reviews, on the subjects of immigration and integration.
How the news portrays scientists in its coverage of immigration and integration is also relevant. It is not only politicians and their parties who speak
up in immigration debates; but media companies and publishers also participate directly. (See below.) Foundations that collaborate with government
ministries can expect journalistic attention if they have a copy of the report
from the most recent study and, perhaps, the results from a counter study
(See the bottom left of fig. 2.) The public isn’t interested in scientists or foundations whose researchers investigate subjects outside of the current political
agenda. The same is true for basic social science research, which journalists
hardly ever cover. Journalists decide to cover scientists on the basis of their
prominence. It is their professional status that determines their journalistic relevance and, thus, their success at disseminating their interests through
the mass media.
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Georg Ruhrmann
4. Summary and Future Prospects: Discussion Themes
These considerations can be summarized into the following themes for further
discussion.
– The politically based and scientifically informed discussion of integration,
which began only about ten years ago, is now in full swing. At the same
time, right-wing populist contributions to the debate, which are motivated
by racism, are gaining popular approval.
– The analysis of the complex processes of immigration, integration, and disintegration remain the pursuit of social scientists and receive almost no
public attention.
– Politicians’ use of the results of applied social-science research is ad hoc
and motivated by their view that integration is the responsibility of individuals. The time lag between scientific knowledge and its influence on
political decision-making is about 20 years in Germany. It is no longer politics but, increasingly, the economy that drives the discussion of immigration policy.
– For decades, the German media have marginalized the subjects of asylum,
refugees, immigration, and immigrants’ prospects for integration. For decades, from the 1960s to the 1990s, news reporting has been about immigrants, but they have not spoken out actively. Immigrants do not make
assessments, but (usually negative) assessments are made of them. Immigrants do not make demands, but demands are made on them.
– It is now a crucial fact for European societies that immigrants are increasingly taking on leading economic, political, journalistic, and scientific
positions. Corresponding political demands have long been voiced in the
economy, politics, science, and cultural system.
– Systematic empirical analyses of the media coverage of immigration and
integration reveal four consistent themes: integration policies, cultural
proximity, crime, and the risk of terrorism.
– The role of the media’s depiction of contact between immigrants and natives is only starting to be examined systematically. The Internet and its
social media can play a critical role in furthering integration. Research into
new options for interaction and participation is needed.37
– The media’s coverage of scientific research on immigration and integration often distorts its findings. Systematic analyses of the communication
37 Saskia Witteborn, “Constructing the Forced Migrant and the Politics of Space and PlaceMaking,” Journal of Communication 61, no. 6 (2011): 1142–1160 and Christian Fuchs,
Social Media: A Critical Introduction (Los Angeles and London: Sage, 2012).
191
of scientific understanding should explain how, and with what intentions,
science, journalism, and politics interact.
– Whether scientific understanding can be communicated sufficiently to give
policy a scientific basis remains to be seen. Thus, the question arises: How
can scientific research put politics within the scope of evidence-sensitive
transfer projects?
– In Germany, there is still a long way to go before social-scientific research
becomes the basis of evidence-based decision making. Part of the problem
is increasing specialization in the social sciences.
– Increasing competition and time pressure force journalists, especially in
the new audiovisual media and on the Internet, erroneously to present
new and spectacular studies as illustrations of the state of scientific knowledge. Journalists do not usually report on conflicts in scientific evidence as
normal and expected. Instead, they create and stage public controversies.
They portray scientists as fighting among themselves. The background
to research and the economic and political interests that motivate remain
opaque to the public.
Discussion of these themes can stimulate the communication of scientific understanding and help it to enter into the public discourse on immigration and
integration. Business leaders, politicians, scientists, and journalists should not
pit themselves against one another, as frequently happens in Germany. Instead, they can use their different expertises to stimulate each other’s thinking. Quality science journalism can promote this form of communication. It
can help reverse the trend toward increasing disintegration in immigration
societies and have a lasting effect on integration.
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Georg Ruhrmann
Abstract
Migration und Integration gelten zunehmend als relevante politische Themen –
Rundfunk, Presse und Social Web berichten. Die Inhalte und Wirkungen dieser Berichterstattung wurden – ausgehend von internationalen Forschungsarbeiten – hierzulande erst in den letzten zehn Jahren verstärkt analysiert.
Doch wie evident bzw. wissenschaftlich gesichert sind die Befunde? Und:
Werden sie von der Politik(Beratung) rezipiert?
Soziale Integration wird unterstützt, wenn Medien aktuell und hintergründig, wenn sie journalistisch berichten. Der Vortrag beschreibt, wie TV-Nachrichten das Thema Integration zeigen und teilweise auch erklären. Einige
Rezipienten können die Meldungen über (Des-) Integration nicht nur emotional bewerten, sondern auch erinnern und verstehen. Abschließend wird diskutiert, welche Auswahl- und Gestaltungskriterien eines veränderten Journalismus relevant sind, wenn sozialwissenschaftliche Grundlagenforschung
zum Thema Migration und Integration berücksichtigt werden soll.
Since 1998, Prof. Dr. Georg Ruhrmann has been teaching Communication Science at
Friedrich-Schiller-University, Jena, Germany. He studied sociology and biology in
Marburg and in Bielefeld. Among other things, from 2002 to 2008 he managed projects in the German Research Foundation (DFG) researchers’ group “Discrimination
and Tolerance in Intergroup Relations”. Since 2009, he has been researching as part
of program 1409 of the German Research Foundation’s focus area “Wissenschaft
und Öffentlichkeit” (Science and the Public). He is a member of the Kommission für
Risikoforschung und -wahrnehmung (Committee for Risk Research and Risk Perception) of the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) and a member of the Council on Migration (Rat für Migration). New publication: Schwankendes Terrain. Die
Risiken der Risikoberichterstattung. In: Jochen Hörisch and Uwe Kammann (eds.):
Medienwelten im 21. Jahrhundert – 30 Positionen. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink – Grimme
Institut, 2014, S. 83–92.
The Negative Effects of Mass Media
Stereotypes of Latinos and Immigrants
Introduction
In 2015, nearly 55 million Latinos, about 18 % of the total population, call the
United States home. The growth of the Latino population is forecast to continue dramatically such that by around 2042 the United States is expected to
reach a historic milestone as the White, non-Hispanic population drops below
50 % of the total. This growth is being matched by an equally dramatic dispersion over the last several decades of Latinos from traditional receiving states to
smaller towns and cities around the country, particularly in the South and Midwest. Public reaction to this growing population has ranged from welcoming
to discriminatory to outright violent. Absent federal comprehensive immigration reform, state and local elected officials have been crafting and passing immigration legislation, stoking sometimes virulent debates across the country.1
Given the inevitable political, economic, and social challenges that accompany this massive demographic change, it is more important than ever to understand how Americans perceive Latinos and immigrants and what role the
news and entertainment media play in shaping this collective public perception. If public opinion reflects the media’s pervasive stereotypes of Latinos
and immigrants as law-breaking, permanent foreigners, it will severely hinder the United States’ ability to live up to its ideals of an inclusive, multiracial
democracy.
In this chapter, we leverage data from a national survey and an interactive online experiment to answer two key questions. First, which stereotypes
about Latinos and immigrants do Americans hold? Second, does exposure to
these stereotypes from popular media sources reinforce or attenuate them?
We find convincing evidence that non-Latinos attribute both negative and
positive stereotypes to Latinos and immigrants, that these stereotypes are
not moderated by interpersonal contact with Latinos or immigrants, and that
news and entertainment media can shape public opinion about Latinos and
immigrants in a variety of ways.
1 Andrea Christina Nill, “Latinos and S. B. 1070: Demonization, Dehumanization, and
Disenfranchisement,” Harvard Latino Law Review 14 (2011): 35–66.
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Latino-Threat Narrative
At least since the beginning of the 20th century, Latino immigrants have been
constructed by political and media elites as threatening to the nation.2 The
creation of a new citizenship category in the 1920s — “illegal alien”3 — reframed
immigration from Mexico as both undesirable and an affront to strong American traditions of law and order. These frames have not only persisted but have
been applied, at least in popular discourse, to all Latino immigrants as well as
their U. S.-born children.4
These legal and political constructs are not just artifacts of American political history, but they have also heavily influenced the public and published
debate over contemporary immigration policies at the local, state, and national level. California’s political battles over immigrants and immigration in
the early 1990s are particularly illustrative. Flailing incumbent governor Pete
Wilson built his 1994 re-election campaign around support for Proposition
187, a punitive ballot measure that barred undocumented immigrants from a
number of state services, including education and health care. Leveraging the
stereotype of Latinos and immigrants as criminals, Wilson played to and exacerbated White voters’ fears of demographic change, catapulting himself into
another four years in office.5
Wilson’s loud embrace of anti-immigrant politics and rhetoric also thrust
Latino and immigrant stereotypes into mainstream public discourse. Shortly
after the Proposition 187 fight, California voters passed Proposition 209, ending the use of affirmative action, and Proposition 227, eliminating bilingual
education from the state’s public school system.6 Together, the fights over
these ballot initiatives legitimized caustic public discourse about Latinos and
immigrants that would shape public opinion and set the tone for the immigration debates that were to follow.
By the time Congress attempted an overdue overhaul of the federal immigration system in 2006, anti-Latino and anti-immigrant forces were well en2 Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); Leo Chavez, Covering Immigration: Popular
Images and the Politics of the Nation (Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 2001).
3 In some portions of this chapter, we use the phrase “illegal alien” to refer to undocu mented
immigrants. In order to test subjects’ responses to the language that is actually used in the
news media, survey questions used “illegal” rather than “undocumented.” We recognize
that the accepted terminology is “undocumented” and are not endorsing the use of “illegal.”
4 Chavez, Covering Immigration.
5 Daniel HoSang, Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California (Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 2010).
6 Otto Santa Ana, Brown Tide Rising: Metaphors of Latinos in Contemporary American Public Discourse (Austin, TX : University of Texas Press, 2002).
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The Negative Effects
trenched and armed with powerful frames to derail reform efforts. Both White
supremacy groups and respected scholars warned of the reconquista of the
Southwest.7 Groups of armed vigilantes organized to patrol the U. S.-Mexican
border, newly designated a terrorist gateway in post-9/11 America.8 Loud cries
of “No Amnesty” from the grassroots, energized partly through cable television and conservative talk radio, forced Republican U. S. Senators worried about
primary challenges to distance themselves from any immigration legislation
that included a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.9 With
withering public support, loud opposition, and negative stereotypes firmly entrenched in both popular discourse and public opinion about Latinos and immigrants, the 2006 and 2007 immigration reform efforts both died in Congress.
By now, it is common to see media coverage of Latino immigrants that
is negative in tone, full of stereotypes, and highly sensational.10 A 2008
Brookings Institute report on immigration coverage analyzed 70,737 stories
from 48 media outlets across five different media types and concluded that
coverage of Latinos and immigrants focuses almost exclusively on undocumented immigrants and immigration, lacks important context, and often
frames immigration as a crisis.11
These media frames matter. As Santa Ana (2002) points out, human thinking relies on images and metaphors. These images and metaphors are the
mental building blocks with which humans make sense of their social world.
Given that Americans are poorly informed about issues of immigration,12
media and political elites can play a large role in constructing the metaphors by
which Americans come to understand demographic change, immigration, and
7 Southern Poverty Law Center, “American Border Patrol/American Patrol,” http://www.
splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/groups/american-border-patrol/americanpatrol, n.d.; Samuel Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National
Identity (Simon and Schuster, 2005).
8 Marc R. Rosenblum, “US Immigration Policy Since 9/11: Understanding the Stalemate
Over Comprehensive Immigration Reform” (Migration Policy Institute, 2011), http://
www.migrationpolicy.org/pubs/RMSG -post-9–11policy.pdf.
9 Banu Akdenizli et al., “A Report on the Media and the Immigration Debate” (Brookings
Institution Report, 2008).
10 Marisa Abrajano and S. Singh, “Examining the Link Between Issue Attitudes and News
Source: The Case of Latinos and Immigration Reform,” Political Behavior 31 (2009):1–30;
Regina Branton and Johanna Dunaway, “English and Spanish-Language Media Coverage of Immigration: A Comparative Analysis,” Social Science Quarterly 89, no. 4 (2008):
1006–22; Regina Branton and Johanna Dunaway, “Spatial Proximity to the U. S.-Mexican
Border and Local News Coverage of Immigration Issues,” Political Research Quarterly 62,
no. 2 (2009): 289–302.
11 Akdenizli et al., “A Report on the Media.”
12 John Sides and Jack Citrin, “How Large the Huddled Masses? The Causes and Consequences of Public Misperceptions about Immigrant Populations” (paper presented at the
annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL , 2007).
198
Latinos.13 These metaphors can also set the range, tenor, and content of the
public policy proposed and passed by lawmakers at all levels of government.14
While we now understand how Latinos and immigrants have been framed
in popular discourse,15 few studies have explored the extent to which nonLatinos believe these stereotypes or the priming effects that these stereotypes
might have on public opinion when seen in various forms of public media.
We explore both in turn.
The Data
The data for this study come from two surveys, fielded by the independent
consulting firm Latino Decisions in March of 2012, which were commissioned by the National Hispanic Media Coalition.16/17 The first is a national
telephone survey of 900 non-Latinos from across the United States. The second is an interactive online experiment with 3,000 non-Latino respondents
who were randomly assigned to receive different messaging about Latinos and
immigrants from across four types of media — print media, radio, television
news, and television and film entertainment — and then asked a number of
questions about their views on Latinos, immigrants, and the media.
Stereotypes of Latinos
Before we examine the relationship between public opinion and media messages, we begin by establishing the extent to which respondents believe common stereotypes about Latinos. In the aggregate, we find that respondents
13 Ted Brader, Nicholas Valentino, and Elizabeth Suhay, “What Triggers Public Opposition
to Immigration? Anxiety, Group Cues, and Immigration Threat,” American Journal of
Political Science 52 (2008): 959–78.
15 Santa Ana 2002; Chavez 2001; Akdenizli et al. 2008.
16 Latino Decisions, “The Impact of Media Stereotypes on Opinions and Attitudes towards
Latinos” (study commissioned by The National Hispanic Media Coalition, 2012), http://
www.latinodecisions.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/RevisedNHMC .Aug2012.pdf.
17 The authors wish to thank Alex Nogales, President and CEO of the National Hispanic
Media Coalition, for his support of this study. The NHMC commissioned the original study which provided the data for this chapter in a report from September 2012 entitled “The impact of media stereotypes on opinion and attitudes towards Latinos.”
Matt Barreto and Gary Segura, co-founders of Latino Decisions, also contributed to the
NHMC report upon which we drew, and we thank them for their contributions.
199
Family oriented
Hardworking
Religious/Churchgoing
Honest
Welfare recipients
Less educated
Refuse to learn English
Too many children
Take jobs from Americans
Don’t keep up their homes
Percentage who agree
or somewhat agree
Note: Bars indicate the percentage of respondents who agree or somewhat agree that each
term describes Latinos.
Fig. 1: Belief in Common Positive and Negative Stereotypes About Latinos
Criminal
71
Gardner
64
Maid
61
Police
56
Dropout
46
Doctor
45
Teacher
42
Judge
38
0
20
40
60
80
Percentage who see Latinos in
stereotypical roles
Note: Bars indicate the combined proportion of respondents who very often or sometimes recall seeing Hispanics or Latinos playing each role.
Fig. 2: Latinos in Stereotypical TV and Film Roles
tend to hold a number of negative and positive stereotypes about Latinos. Figure 1 shows that while over three-quarters of respondents see Latinos as family oriented (90 %), hardworking (81 %), religious (81 %), and honest (76 %),
either a plurality or a majority agree that terms like “welfare recipient” (51 %),
200
“less educated” (50 %), “refuse to learn English” (44 %), and “too many children” (40 %) also describe Latinos very well or somewhat well. A smaller proportion agrees that Latinos “take jobs from Americans” (37 %) and “don’t keep
up their homes” (33 %). While a much larger percentage of our respondents
believe positive stereotypes, a shocking number buy into negative stereotypes.
In order to tie stereotypes to media depictions of Latinos, respondents were
asked to think about films and television programs and to recall the roles they
often saw Latinos play. As we see in Figure 2, the top three responses were
criminal or gang member (71 %), gardener (64 %), and maid (61 %). Far fewer
could recall seeing Latinos depicted in more positive or prestigious professions: doctor, nurse, educator, or lawyer.
We know, however, that public opinion about Latinos is shaped by a number of personal demographic variables as well as contextual factors. Here we
focus primarily on respondent familiarity with Latinos.
Some scholars contend that contact with out-groups will, over time, promote
acceptance of them.18 Were that the case, then the more familiar respondents
were with Latinos, the less likely they would be to believe media stereotypes. To
test this, we combined three variables into a familiarity index: whether the respondent has regular interactions with Latinos, is familiar with Latino culture,
and personally knows Latinos. In all, about 44 % of the sample was very familiar with Latinos, 37 % was moderately familiar, and 19 % was slightly familiar.
Looking first at how familiarity might moderate general favorability toward Latinos and immigrants, we asked respondents to use a feeling thermometer19 to register their feelings about Latinos. We found a generally favorable attitude towards Latinos but one that was influenced by a respondent’s
familiarity with members of the group. Latinos received an average score of
59 (out of 100) from those who were slightly familiar, 67 from those who were
moderately familiar, and 72 from those who were very familiar.
Familiarity with Latinos had little impact, however, on belief in negative
stereotypes. Figure 3 shows the percentage of respondents, for each level of familiarity, who agreed with any of the top four negative stereotypes about Latinos. We see that familiarity had no consistent moderating effect on belief in
18 Gordon Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1954); Stephen
D. Voss, “Beyond Racial Threat: Failure of an Old Hypothesis in the New South,” The
Journal of Politics 58, no. 4 (1996): 1156–70. But see V. O. Key, Southern Politics in State
and Nation (New York: Knopf, 1949); Hubert Blalock, Toward a Theory of MinorityGroup Relations (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1967); Benjamin Newman, “Acculturating Contexts and Anglo Opposition to Immigration in the United States,” American
Journal of Political Science 57, no. 2 (2012): 374–90.
19 A feeling thermometer is a scale from zero to 100 that allows a respondent to express
feelings towards a person or group in terms of degrees. Zero, “cold,” indicated that the respondent does not like the person or group at all. 100, “warm,” indicates that they like the
person or group a lot.
201
Low familiarity
Moderate familiarity
49 49 49
48
Percent who agree or
somewhat agree
44
41
38
39
Too Many Kids
High familiarity
42
44
36 37
Take Jobs
Refuse to Learn
English
On Welfare
Note: Bars indicate percentage of those who agree or somewhat agree that each stereotype describes Latinos for each level of familiarity on our familiarity scale.
Fig. 3. Negative Stereotypes by Familiarity with Latinos
negative stereotypes. More recent research on racial threat suggests that the
impact of racial context on attitudes towards out-groups is moderated by levels of segregation20 and rate of growth conditioned on baseline size of outgroup population,21 contextual indicators that were not measured in the survey and therefore were not captured by our familiarity index.
Finally, we looked at how respondents feel about undocumented immigrants. The survey tested the phrase “illegal aliens,” the dominant media
frame of immigrants.22 We found, not surprisingly, that respondents had
fairly negative attitudes about undocumented immigrants but that these attitudes were moderated by familiarity with Latinos. Those with low familiarity
with Latinos had, on average, very cold feelings towards undocumented immigrants (average score of 28 out of 100) compared to those with moderate
familiarity (36) and high familiarity (44).
20 Rene Rocha and Rodolfo Espino, “Racial Threat, Residential Segregation, and the Policy
Attitudes of Anglos,” Political Research Quarterly 62, no. 2 (2009): 415–26; Rene Rocha
and Rodolfo Espino, “Segregation, Immigration, and Latino Participation in Ethnic Politics,” American Political Research 38, no. 4 (2010): 614–35.
21 Benjamin Newman, “Acculturating Contexts and Anglo Opposition to Immigration in
the United States,” American Journal of Political Science 57, no. 2 (2012): 374–90; Daniel
J. Hopkins, “Politicized Places: Explaining Where and When Immigrants Provoke Local
Opposition,” American Political Science Review 104, no. 1 (2010): 40–60.
202
In sum, we see that individuals hold both positive and negative stereotypes
of Latinos and that negative stereotypes often correspond with negative depictions on television and in film. We find that generally favorable attitudes
toward Latinos and undocumented immigrants are moderated by familiarity
but that negative stereotypes about Latinos persist regardless of respondents’
familiarity with Latinos and Latino culture, suggesting a potentially strong
role for other sources, like media stereotypes, in shaping individuals’ attitudes.
News Sources and Opinions about Latinos and Immigrants
Respondents were also asked what forms of media they rely on for their news
and information and how much they trust each form. We found that a large
number (66 %) of respondents rely primarily on television for their news,
whether that be national cable news (30 %), national network news (18 %), or
local news (18 %). Only 12 % rely primarily on newspapers, 11 % on the Internet, and 7 % on radio.
When asked how much they trust these news sources, respondents overwhelmingly reported that they trusted television news. 81 % of respondents
trusted local news to be honest and accurate very often or somewhat often.
73 % trusted national network news to be honest and accurate very often or
somewhat often. A majority even trusted CNN (68 %), Fox News (58 %), and
MSNBC (59 %) to be honest and accurate very often or somewhat often, suggesting even further that all forms of television news could have a powerful
impact on attitudes about Latinos and immigrants.
Returning to our feeling thermometers, we can assess the general attitudes
towards immigrants of those respondents who indicate trust in different news
sources. While we cannot assess causality, the trends are revealing. (See Figure 4.) A large percentage of those who trust more liberal news sources, like
MSNBC , or public news sources, like NPR and PBS , which tend to be consumed by those with more liberal worldviews, feel warmly towards Latinos.
Those who listen to more conservative media, like Fox News and talk radio,
tend to feel less warmly towards Latinos.
Returning to our data on stereotypes, we can break down the percentage of
respondents who agree with negative stereotypes in terms of their choices of
news sources. As we see in Figure 5, those who watch Fox News are the most
likely to agree with negative stereotypes about Latinos, followed by network
news viewers, and then MSNBC viewers. The trend persists for all negative
stereotypes.
We can also examine those who listen to radio for their news and information. Comparing those who listen to conservative talk radio and NPR , we see a
203
Warm
Neutral
Cold
61
60
60
54
56
31
31
33
31
38
35
5
7
7
9
8
9
NPR
PBS
MSNBC
CNN
Fox News
Talk radio
Percent
64
Note: Numbers indicate percentage of respondent who felt warm, neutral, or cold towards
Latinos across different trusted news sources.
Fig. 4. Attitudes Towards Latinos by Trusted News Sources
Fox News
Network News
MSNBC
somewhat agree
56
48
49
48
42
42
39
43
41
37
28
19
On Welfare
Refuse learn English
Take jobs
Too many kids
Note: Numbers and bars indicate percentage of respondents who agree or somewhat agree
with each stereotype for viewers of three different media sources.
Fig. 5. Latino Stereotypes by News Sources
204
NPR
somewhat agree
Talk radio
On Welfare
Take jobs
Refuse learn English
Too many kids
Note: Numbers and bars indicate the percentage of talk radio and NPR listeners who agree or
somewhat agree with each stereotype.
Fig. 6. Belief in Latino Stereotypes by Radio Audience
large divergence in belief in negative Latino stereotypes. (See Figure 6.) Conservative talk radio listeners are 22 percentage points more likely to believe
that Latinos take jobs from natives, 16 percentage points more likely to think
that Latinos have too many kids, 7 percentage points more likely to think that
Latinos are on welfare, and 6 percentage points more likely to think that Latinos refuse to learn English than their NPR listening counterparts.
Similar to the patterns above, we also find differences in the attitudes towards
undocumented immigrants of those who trust different news sources. 70 % of
respondents who trust Fox News feel cold towards undocumented immigrants
compared to just 46 % of those who trust NPR . See Figure 7 for the full details.
In sum, we see that respondents rely primarily on television for their news
and information and that they trust this news to be honest and accurate. Assessing feeling thermometer ratings toward Latinos and undocumented immigrants across different programs showed small but consistent patterns of
more positive feelings for viewers who trust more liberal news or non-partisan
news compared to those who trust more conservative sources, like Fox News
or conservative talk radio. Returning to agreement with negative Latino stereotypes across various programs, the trends are starker. Those who watch
Fox News are more likely to agree with negative stereotypes about Latinos
than those who view network news or MSNBC . Similarly, those who listen
to conservative talk radio are more likely to agree with negative stereotypes
about Latinos than those who listen to NPR .
205
Neutral
Cold
Percent
Warm
NPR
PBS
MSNBC
CNN
Talk radio
Fox News
Note: Numbers indicate percentage of respondent who felt warm, neutral, or cold towards “Illegal Aliens” across different trusted news sources.
Fig. 7: Trusted News Sources and Attitudes Towards Undocumented Immigrants
While we cannot address issues of potential reverse causality with observational data, we are confident that strong relationships exist among viewing
and trusting more conservative news sources, having colder feelings towards
Latinos and undocumented immigrants, and agreeing more strongly with
negative stereotypes. Other research, however, suggests that the relationship
might be causal. As Akdenizli et al. (2008) point out, conservative voices on
cable television and talk radio played a crucial role in framing the debate on
comprehensive immigration reform, mobilizing grassroots opposition, and
stymying the immigration reform debate in 2006 and 2007.23
Priming Experiment
While the previous survey found strong correlations between media consumption and attitudes towards Latinos, we were unable to measure directly
the impact of the medium and the message. Given that respondents trust
some media sources more than others, and that media elites use a variety of
23 See also “Campaign for President Takes Center Stage in Coverage” (Pew Research Center, Journalism and Media, 2007), http://www.journalism.org/2007/08/20/campaign-forpresident-takes-center-stage-in-coverage/.
206
frames, metaphors, and stereotypes when talking about Latinos and immigrants, it is possible that some media and some messages have a stronger impact on respondents’ attitudes than others. Using data from an interactive online experiment, we were able to test different combinations.
Participants in the experiment were randomly assigned to one of ten
groups. The first two groups received either no stimulus or a placebo. The remaining respondents either watched a positive or a negative TV or movie clip
(entertainment prime), watched a positive or a negative TV news story (TV
news prime), listened to a positive or a negative radio clip (radio prime), or
read a positive or a negative print article (print prime).24 Following the prime,
respondents answered questions on their views about Latinos, immigrants,
and the media. We focus on comparing those who received positive primes
and negative primes below.
Positive Stereotypes
Looking first at media and positive stereotypes, respondents who were exposed to positive primes were more likely to agree that positive stereotypes
applied to Latinos than those who were exposed to negative primes. The pattern held across the positive stereotypes. In Figure 8, we present the percentage point difference between those given the positive prime who agree with
the stereotype and those given the negative prime who agree. We see that the
primes have large effects on respondents’ perceptions of Latinos as honest,
neighborly/welcoming, and patriotic.
Negative Stereotypes
We find that media-message primes have an equally large and consistent effect
on beliefs in negative stereotypes. As Figure 9 shows, the negative prime effectively heightens beliefs in negative stereotypes across every media type for every
stereotype. As with the positive stereotypes above, we see that television news
has the strongest effect in priming attitudes about Latinos and immigrants followed by talk radio. We also notice that even non-authoritative popular entertainment has the power to color attitudes towards Latinos and immigrants.
24 Because the NHMC/Latino Decisions study used actual media clips, the positive/negative treatments for each media type are somewhat different, not a simple manipulation of
language or frame across each media type. Thus, we are comparing how subjects respond
to real-world media clips, not laboratory-controlled experimental manipulations. What
internal validity we lose from the lack of a perfectly controlled environment we gain back
through the use of real-world stimuli.
207
Television News
Print
Movie/TV
Radio
Treatment
Positive – Negative
15
10
5
0
Honest
Neighborly
PatrioticW
Note: Bars indicate difference in percentage point agreement with each stereotype for respondents exposed to the positive prime and respondents exposed to the negative prime.
Fig. 8. Treatment Effect of Positive and Negative Primes on Positive Stereotypes
Television News
Radio
Print
Movie/TV
Treatment
Negative – Positive
15
10
5
0
Have too many
Use welfare
Culture crime/gangs
Takes jobs
children
Note: Bars indicate difference in percentage point agreement with each stereotype for respondents exposed to the positive prime and respondents exposed to the negative prime.
Fig. 9. Treatment Effect of Positive and Negative Primes on Negative Stereotypes
208
Television News
Radio
Print
Movie/TV
Treatment
Negative – Positive
15
14
12
10
5
6
2
0
1
2
3
4
Note: Bars indicate difference between percentage who agree with each Latino stereotype
for respondents exposed to the negative prime and percentage who agree for respondents
exposed to the positive prime.
Fig. 10. Association of Latinos with “Illegal Immigrants” across Experimental Conditions
We also see, however, the power of positive primes to decrease belief in negative stereotypes about Latinos. Less than half of those in each positively
primed group agreed with negative stereotypes.
Finally, we tested how much respondents associated Latinos with undocumented immigrants across experimental conditions. Figure 10 shows that,
regardless of positive priming, either a plurality or a majority of respondents
still cling to the belief that most Latinos are “illegal” immigrants. The negative primes, particularly the TV news and entertainment treatments, had a
sizable effect. It may be that the “illegal” narrative has been so deeply engrained in the popular discourse about Latino immigrants25 that it would
take significantly more exposure to positive primes to disabuse respondents
of this characterization of Latino immigrants. Our findings highlight the
importance of positive depictions of Latinos and immigrants in the media, especially the press, in decreasing belief in negative stereotypes and increasing
belief in positive stereotypes.
While compelling, our experimental findings face a few limitations. In particular, we do not have the ability with these data to assess the duration of the
priming effect. Research on campaign advertising has found that the persua25 Leo Chavez, The Latino Threat: Construction Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation (Palo
Alto, CA : Stanford University Press, 2013).
209
sive effects of advertisements decay quickly after exposure.26 Two important
differences exist between these primes and campaign advertising, however.
First, individuals tend to minimize cognitive dissonance by avoiding exposure to ideologically conflicting messages, constructing “echo chambers.”27
Thus, we expect that respondents would tend to minimize their contact with
conflicting stories and images of Latinos and immigrants. Second, as noted
above, Latinos and immigrants in the United States have traditionally been
portrayed negatively by political and media elites, limiting audience’s exposure to positive frames. Media, then, has helped to create and maintain the
stereotypes through which Americans evaluate Latinos and immigrants.
Conclusion
This chapter highlights the role that stereotypes play in common perceptions
of Latinos and immigrants and the role that the media play in crafting attitudes and opinions about the fastest growing segment of the population. More
specifically, we have leveraged two unique datasets to examine public attitudes about Latinos and immigrants and the effect of media in shaping those
attitudes. We found that respondents held a variety of contrasting positive
and negative stereotypes about Latinos and immigrants and that their belief
in these stereotypes, as well as their general attitudes towards Latinos, were
correlated with their media choices. In particular, those who consume and
trust conservative media are more likely to agree with negative stereotypes
and hold less favorable views about Latinos and immigrants while those who
consume and trust liberal media are slightly more likely to reject those negative stereotypes and hold more favorable views of Latinos and immigrants.
While the observational data allowed us to establish correlations between
media consumption and attitudes, we were unable to determine the causal
effects of positive and negative primes on attitudes. Our experimental data,
however, offered some insight into the power of positive and negative primes
across a variety of media sources. In particular, we found that different forms
of media can increase or decrease agreement with both positive and negative
stereotypes about Latinos. In particular, authoritative sources, like television
news, had the largest effects.
26 Seth Hill, James Lo, John Zaller, and Lynn Vavreck, “How Quickly We Forget: The Duration of Persuasion Effects from Mass Communication,” Political Communication 30,
no. 4 (2013): 521–47.
27 Cass Sunstein, Republic.com 2.0. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).
210
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Abstract
Trotz der zunehmenden Bedeutung von Latinas und Latinos sowie Migrant*innen für das U. S.-amerikanische soziale, ökonomische und politische Leben
sind diese nach wie vor mit Stereotypisierungen und Diskriminierung in der
Gesellschaft und durch die Medien konfrontiert. Wenig ist jedoch darüber
bekannt, mit welchen Stereotypen diese Gruppen sich am häufigsten auseinandersetzen müssen, oder darüber, ob die Medien diese Bilder eher verstärken oder abschwächen. Die Auswertung einer repräsentativen Telefonumfrage unter Nicht-Latinos in den USA zeigte, dass die Befragten auf eine
große Bandbreite teils widersprüchlicher, positiver und negativer, Stereotypen
zurückgriffen, und dass ihre Ansichten mit ihrer Medienwahl und -nutzung
korrelierten. Vor diesem Hintergrund machen wir von einer experimentellen Online-Umfrage Gebrauch, um die Auswirkung verschiedener Arten
medialer Botschaften auf die individuelle Haltung zu untersuchen. Die Daten zeigen klar, dass verschiedene mediale Botschaften den Glauben an negative Stereotype über Latinas und Latinos sowie Migrant*innen verstärken
können. Unsere Ergebnisse heben die wichtige Rolle hervor, die Nachrichtenund Unterhaltungsmedien bei der Herausbildung von Haltungen gegenüber
dem am schnellsten wachsenden Segment der U. S.-amerikanischen Bevölkerung spielen.
212
Tyler Reny is a Ph.D. student in the department of Political Science at University of
California, Los Angeles and his research focuses on issues related to immigration, minority representation, campaigns, and public opinion. Specifically, his research examines how and why candidates use anti-immigrant or pro-immigrant campaign appeals
when running for office, and how voters respond. He was formerly a research associate to the New Americans Leaders Project which helped recruit, train and promote
more immigrants into public office and elected positions.
Sylvia Manzano, Ph.D., is a Principal at the polling and research firm Latino Decisions,
and was the lead researcher on the project “The Impact of Media Stereotypes on Opinions and Attitudes Towards Latinos” in partnership with the National Hispanic Media
Coalition. Manzano holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Arizona
and is a leading expert on Latino public opinion, electoral behavior and immigration
policy reform. Manzano has published numerous academic journal articles and book
chapters on Latino political and civic engagement and has been widely quoted in the
press as an expert on Latino voting patterns.
Chapter 4
Media Use and Strategies
for a More Inclusive Media Landscape
Shion Kumai
Paths to Greater Diversity in the Media
Obstacles and Opportunities for Journalistic Practice in
Reporting on Migration Themes
“Whatever we know about our society, or indeed about the world in which
we live, we know through the mass media.”1 This famous quote of the sociologist Niklas Luhmann implies that the mass media have a social responsibility to transmit knowledge. Human beings can collectively integrate into their
worldviews only what the media publicize and thereby make accessible to
everyone. The media are important sources of information because they describe events and convey those messages to a broad audience. Journalists, who
choose subjects, select information, and contextualize events, thereby interpret events on the basis of common patterns. In other words, events are not
meaningful in themselves but acquire meaning through the explanatory contexts that the media produce.
In this way, the media shape public opinion and construct social reality. And they make a significant contribution to the way people conceive
the world. This means that the media should be mirrors of society reflecting its diversity. However, a variety of studies have shown2 that the diversity
of Germany as an immigrant society is not evident in its media’s current coverage or on their editorial staffs. The only exceptions are the editorial staffs
of publishers and broadcasters based in large cities. What do these findings
mean for journalistic practice? More generally, what interactions are there between theory and practice, and what impact can they have?
1 Niklas Luhmann, The Reality of the Mass Media (Cambridge, UK : Polity Press, 2000), 1.
2 See, for example, Christoph Butterwegge, “Migrationsberichterstattung, Medienpädagogik
und politische Bildung.” In Massenmedien, Migration und Integration, ed. Christoph
Butterwegge and Gudrun Hentges (Wiesbaden: Springer-Verlag, 2006.) Rainer Geißler
and Horst Pöttker, Massenmedien und die Integration ethnischer Minderheiten (Bielefeld:
transcript Verlag, 2009); Siegfried Jäger, Medien und Straftaten: Vorschläge zur Vermeidung diskriminierender Berichterstattung über Einwanderer und Flüchtlinge (Duisburg:
Ph. D. diss 1998); Joachim Trebbe, Ethnische Minderheiten, Massenmedien und Integration: Eine Untersuchung massenmedialer Repräsentation und Medienwirkungen (Wiesbaden: Springer VS , 2009); Kai Hafez, “Mediengesellschaft-Wissensgesellschaft?,” in Islamfeindlichkeit: Wenn die Grenzen der Kritik verschwimmen, ed. Thorsten Gerald Schneiders
(Wiesbaden: Springer VS , 2009).
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Shion Kumai
In November 2014, journalists working in different media discussed these
questions on the panel “Strategies for an Inclusive Media Landscape,” which
was part of the international conference “Media and Minorities: Questions on
Representation from an International Perspective.” The conference was organized by the Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin in collaboration with
the Rat für Migration [Council for Migration] and took place in Berlin on
27–28 November 2014. In the first part of the discussion, “Agenda Setting as
Regards Minority Issues,” Kübra Gümüşay and Jamie C. Schaerer introduced
participants to their hash tag campaign #SchauHin (“don’t look away”), and
Ekrem Şenol informed them about the online journal MiGAZIN. The second half, entitled “A Look at Editorial Teams: from Theory to Practice” and
hosted by Ferda Ataman, featured the journalists Samantha Asumadu, René
Aguigah, Daniel Bax, and Rainer Munz.
Presenters provided participants a glimpse into media practice and the associated challenges that determine journalists’ actions. Furthermore, they
discussed strategies, some of which organizations are already using, to promote inclusive reporting and an inclusive media landscape. The following
summarizes the most important points of these discussions.
Reporting Routines:
Questioning Things We Normally Take for Granted
Although journalists are obligated to report on social change accurately, and
insightfully, they often fall into commonly heard, well-established patterns of
representation when covering migration themes. Due to its linking of certain
subjects, like crime and minorities, its repetitive use of stereotypical images,
and the lack of minority representativeness in its treatment of non-minority
issues, current reporting tends to distort, rather than accurately represent, reality. Rainer Munz, head of the Berlin studios of RTL/n-tv, described the problem as follows: “When was the last time we showed a Muslim woman wearing a headscarf in a report about intellectuals? I don’t think we ever have in
any of our news programs. But we’re quick to use an image of a street scene
in [the Berlin district] Neukölln showing women in headscarves when we’re
looking for a photo to illustrate a story.” Sometimes time pressure in the editorial departments is to blame, he said. “On this point those of us on the editorial teams need to rethink our reporting routines!”
Media reports disproportionately link people from immigrant backgrounds
to negative issues. At the same time, such individuals are rarely the focus of reports that are not about migration. In this way, stereotypes emerge
or are reinforced. Combinations of text and images establish connections
217
that are based on simplistic stereotypes and taken to be self-evident. It is a
fairly common practice to illustrate stories about integration with images of
women in headscarves, which draws attention to Muslims. In this connection,
Daniel Bax, political editor of taz and a board member of the Neue deutsche
Medienmacher, a group of journalists committed to greater diversity in the
media, explained the importance of news value: “It has to be something unusual. Most media outlets focus on negative events — violence, conflicts, war.
These are the topics they find interesting. In most cases, unspectacular everyday lives are unimportant. These are the daily media mechanisms we’re dealing with.”
However, as René Aguigah, head of the Culture and Society Department
at Deutschlandradio Kultur, argued, people from immigrant backgrounds
should not be reduced to one aspect of their perceived or real identities. It is
important for other narratives to be employed: “I think it would be desirable
for many journalists and authors to come up with different stories.” Rainer
Munz, for his part, cited a report on the minimum wage as an example of how
the population’s diversity can be represented as a normal state of affairs. In
this report, a person from an immigrant background was questioned about
his attitudes and everyday working life without any mention of his family’s
origins. People should be viewed not from the perspective of their differences
but as members of society and as competent individuals.
To this end, the Neue deutsche Medienmacher have developed an online
database of experts with migrant backgrounds who can be contacted for interviews on various topics. On their flier, they are quoted as saying, “We’re
experts not on Islam, integration, or the green grocery trade, but on dike construction, the German language, and tenancy law.”3
Careful Research, Nuanced Descriptions, Inclusive Language
The discourse on migration, which is often emotionally charged, should become “more objective,” explains Ferda Ataman, head of Mediendienst Integration, an information platform for journalists. Facts and figures are important for informing people and supporting arguments, but it is also essential
to understand these facts properly and to research their different contexts
carefully. For this reason, Mediendienst Integration has compiled important information on topics such as immigration. On the basis of specific articles, it regularly points out where the problems in current media coverage lie.
3 Vielfaltfinder [Diversity Finder], Neue deutsche Medienmacher, accessed 28 July 2015,
https://www.vielfaltfinder.de/.
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Shion Kumai
In addition, with its fact checks, it performs a kind of control function, drawing attention to erroneous or missing research.
In addition, language should be used sensitively in the coverage of migration issues. Nuanced descriptions are crucial here as in other fields. Neue
deutsche Medienmacher has published a glossary of phrases for this purpose
that contains not only definitions, alternative terms, and differentiated descriptions (all developed on the basis of journalistic practice) but also suggestions for how journalists’ work can thematically and linguistically reflect
human diversity and, thus, counter the idea, and representations, of homogeneous groups. The nuanced use of language can contribute to a nuanced
view of the world.
For example, referring to a person’s origins is often unnecessary. Nevertheless, crime reporters often mention the actual or supposed origins of nonwhite Germans, even when this information is irrelevant to the crime. In this
way, they repeat and reinforce the prejudice that foreigners are criminals. On
the other hand, the ethnicity of the victims of crime often goes unmentioned.
This results in facts being concealed, as was evident in the initial coverage of
the murder of Marwa El-Sherbini in a Dresden courtroom.4 Several days
passed before the perpetrator’s anti-Islamic motives were revealed. Only after voices on Internet blogs and forums were raised did the established media
take notice. “The mass media’s perspective does not include the minority perspective,” says Daniel Bax.
In the case of the racially motivated murders committed between 2000 and
2006 by the National Socialist Underground (NSU), the media uncritically accepted the “findings” of the investigating authorities. Until 2011, the authorities presumed that the motive for the murders involved extortion or drugdealing. The expression “döner kebab murders,” coined and frequently used
by journalists, confirmed this prejudicial presumption. It also subjected the
victims to the worst sort of discrimination by reducing their humanity to a
fast-food meal because of their origins.
Such expressions show the dangers of stereotypical patterns of thought.
They make clear that one-sided perspectives limit one’s view of problems.
Even before the link to the NSU was uncovered, the Turkish-language media
and the Turkish community voiced their suspicion that right-wing extremists
had committed the murders. According to Daniel Bax, the degree to which
racism is an issue for editorial teams depends on how “diverse the editorial
staff is.”
4 See Sabine Schiffer, “Zum medialen Umgang mit dem antiislamisch motivierten Mord
an Marwa El-Sherbini in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz.” Institut für Medienverantwortung, 15 December 2009. Accessed 20 July 2015. http://www.medienverant
wortung.de/wpcontent/uploads/2009/12/20091215_Medien-MordAnMarwa.pdf.
219
Greater Diversity in Media Production
Although around 20 percent of Germany’s population has an immigrant
background, studies show that currently only between 2 and 3 percent of media professionals are non-white Germans.5 In order to correct this imbalance,
Neue deutsche Medienmacher offers a mentoring program for aspiring journalists from immigrant families to help them establish the contacts that are
crucial in the field. A variety of media companies, with WDR leading the way,
have also begun promoting such young professionals. As a result of WDR’s
staff development program, 20 percent of new hires now have an immigrant
background, and an integration officer is working at the broadcaster as well.
RTL also has a program for young journalists from immigrant families. At
Deutschlandradio Kultur, though, the staff is still not very “colorful.” Given
the presence of only a few non-White interns, René Aguigah says that he feels
“rather lonely there with his skin color.”
But hiring people from immigrant backgrounds does not necessarily make
content more diverse, especially since the point is not to limit their responsibilities to migration issues. The scholar Anamik Saha has examined the conditions of media production that lead to stereotypical representations and
found that journalists from immigrant backgrounds often adapt to production cultures and thus reproduce stereotypes.6 This means that staff diversity
is not enough; the production culture must also change.
What Can Be Done and What is Being Done
in the Mainstream Media?
Editorial meetings can provide a framework for rethinking ways of representing diversity. For example, during editorial meetings at the taz, the staff began
to consider the topic of gender equality and to examine sexist language and
the representation of women in their articles. As a result, the taz became the
first newspaper in Germany to introduce gender-inclusive language. Employment of this form of gender inclusivity is an active process that makes other
people, and not only males, visible and, thus, furthers the project of accurately portraying reality through language. German has various gender-neutral
5 “Journalisten mit Migrationshintergrund,” Medien in der Einwanderungsgesellschaft,
accessed 20 July 2015, http://mediendienst-integration.de/integration/medien.html.
6 Anamik Saha, “Wir brauchen andere Geschichten in den Medien,” accessed 20 July 2015,
http://mediendienst-integration.de/artikel/anamik-saha-kommentar-ueber-medien-undvielfalt-in-grossbritannien.html.
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Shion Kumai
forms, such as the use of an asterisk, an underline, and the capital “I” within a
word. Each of these forms does away with an exclusively male word and puts an
inclusive word in its place. The asterisk and the underline include other genders
besides the female. Thus, the various models of gender-sensitive language are
quite different. According to Daniel Bax, journalists need to consider whether
they merely want to reach readers or to educate them as well. In many cases,
linguistic changes continue to meet with public resistance, which means that
the media and society as a whole must continue to discuss this issue.
But editorial conferences alone are not comprehensive enough to include
discussion of all of the complex problems. It is crucial continually to offer
workshops and training programs in which participants are taught to question what they have always taken for granted. René Aguigah points out that
such programs already exist. His editorial department at Deutschlandradio
Kultur recently held a series of workshops in which participants examined the
vocabulary of war and discussed, for example, the controversial self-designation “Islamic State,” which the media inevitably spreads through its coverage.
As regards the visibility of both staff and program diversity, private broadcasters are one step ahead of their public counterparts. For example, on TV
shows such as The Voice of Germany on Pro7 and Sat1, people from immigrant backgrounds are among the participants and winning contestants, and
the shows are thus able to address a broad TV audience. Presenters such as
Aiman Abdallah, who hosts the educational program Galileo on Pro7, have
long been part of the lineup. But public broadcasters have now also become
much more aware of the issue of diversity and are beginning to rethink their
approaches to it.
Germany: A Special Case?
The problems described above, which concern both the media’s systematic
structure and the contents they produce, are also evident in other European
countries, like Great Britain. When reading a variety of British newspapers,
Samantha Asumadu, a documentary filmmaker and journalist who works for
media outlets such as CNN, Deutsche Welle, and Agence France Presse, found
that around 95 percent of all front-page articles were written by white journalists and did not present any minority perspective. The front page is the
newspaper’s most important page because it catches the eye, presents all the
topics in the issue, and has the task of arousing the potential buyer’s interest.
The issues selected for the front page, the images displayed there, the advertising — almost everything — was determined by whites for the consumption
of whites. A simple analysis of one daily paper revealed that non-whites were
221
present in only four photos. Two portrayed internationally active American
musicians and each of the other two showed someone selling curry on the
street. Here, too, we find a lack of socially adequate representation and the
use of clichés that reduce people to real or supposed aspects of their identity.
Asumadu regards this practice as a serious problem, saying, “The media
cannot reflect society if society is not reflected in the media.” In 2013, she responded by launching the successful social media campaign #AllWhiteFrontPages on Twitter. Many of the people who joined the conversation explained
that they had previously been unaware of the phenomenon. To continue to
raise awareness, Asumadu founded the non-profit organization Media Diversified, an online platform that provides journalists of color an opportunity
to publish their articles and contribute to the discourse. In March 2015, they
launched their Experts Directory, a searchable database of professionals from
diverse backgrounds and a variety of fields and all with experience in media
settings.7
Calling attention to issues and creating awareness
via the Internet
Similar platforms and campaigns in Germany are enabling people with an
immigrant or a German background to make their voices heard via the Internet. “The debates on blackface, racial profiling, and everyday racism would
probably not have been covered by the mainstream media if not for the initiatives that called attention to the topics,” explains Daniel Bax. “Agenda setting,
which is traditionally the responsibility of the mainstream media, is in part
being done on the Internet, and we are the ones who are benefiting. In this respect, it is worth looking at what is happening outside the mainstream media.”
Agenda-setting theory in communication studies assumes that the media
influence the formation of opinion by selecting the issues that are seen as relevant to society.8 Journalists serve as gatekeepers, communicating or ignoring information and, thus, regulating its flow. In this capacity, they determine
whether, and how quickly, an issue enters the public’s awareness. However, minority members rarely assume the position of gatekeeper, which is why everyday issues affecting minorities are seldom covered in the mainstream media.
7 Experts directory, Media Diversified, accessed 3 October 2015, http://directory.media
diversified.org/.
8 See Wolfgang Eichhorn, Agenda-Setting-Prozesse. Eine theoretische Analyse individueller und gesellschaftlicher Themenstrukturierung. 2nd edition. Munich: Verlag Reinhard
Fischer, 2005. Accessed 4 August 2015. epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/734/1/AgendaSetting
Prozesse.pdf.
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Shion Kumai
“That’s a problem that we’re also seeing at MiGAZIN. Many journalists —
staff journalists — are approaching us because they can’t get their stories published in their own newspapers. The stories are “too specialized” or “not interesting enough.” The target audience of the mainstream media doesn’t have a
migrant background,” says Ekrem Şenol, founder of MiGAZIN, an online
magazine that has been reporting on migration and integration issues since
2008. The magazine’s objective is “to address issues that rarely or never appear
in the mainstream media or are distorted there.” The magazine enjoys great
popularity and has even been cited by members of the German Bundestag. In
2012, MiGAZIN received the Grimme Online Award9 for its work and, above
all, its “high-quality texts.”10 Şenol’s personal incentive to pursue the project
came from the “daily frustration, indignation, and anger” he felt when watching television news or reading the newspaper. “I often felt helpless because
I couldn’t participate in the debate.” He decided that he would no longer be
passive but finally take action.
People from immigrant backgrounds are not the only readers of the magazine. As a recent survey showed, around 50 percent are of German origin.
The editorial staff is also made up of professionals from various backgrounds.
Their focus is on the individual. For example, authors on the platform are not
only mentioned by name but also shown in photographs. They include female journalists in headscarves. “At first readers were surprised by the photos
we showed. ‘Wow, she can speak German! And write it, too!’ At some point
that stopped. At some point readers began thinking, ‘Wait a minute, it’s not
an exception.’ In some ways, it’s just a matter of educating them,” says Ekrem
Şenol.
Social media provide another way to get around the gatekeepers of mainstream journalism and ensure that non-White topics gain visibility. In 2013,
Kübra Gümüşay, a journalist, blogger, and Internet activist, and Jamie C.
Schaerer, a political scientist and board member of the Initiative Schwarze
Menschen in Deutschland [Initiative Black People in Germany] and the European Network Against Racism, launched the campaign #SchauHin on Twitter
in order to draw attention to everyday experiences of racism. Their model was
#Aufschrei (“outcry”), which focused on everyday sexism. Like sexism, everyday racism is an elusive phenomenon that cannot easily be quantified and,
thus, is rarely discussed in public. As Gümüşay explains, “We wanted to talk
about an everyday experience without reducing it to a single situation. After
all, racism in daily life is topical and relevant every single day.”
9 The Grimme Online Award is a renowned prize for outstanding online journalism. It has
been presented annually since 2001 by the Grimme Institute. See http://www.grimmeinstitut.de/html/index.php?id=33.
10 Grimme Online Award, recipients 2012, accessed 20 July 2015, http://www.grimmeinstitut.de/html/index.php?id=1430.
223
Several thousand people soon shared their stories, and the hash tag remained on the trending topic11 list in Germany for three days — unusual for a
social issue. According to Gümüşay, “as a result of being shared, these experiences were raised from the individual level to the societal level. The responsibility for dealing with racism no longer lay only with the people who
experienced it on a daily basis, but with all of society.” The campaign thus
made the racist structures in society visible to the public. Journalists were
tagged and thus made aware of the topic’s relevance. In this way, the initiators
succeeded in getting the mainstream media to cover an issue that is usually
difficult to spotlight. Through the coverage, it became part of a public debate. However, the primary goal was to make people aware of racism in everyday life because extreme right-wing expressions of racism are not its only
forms. Subtle manifestations are often not recognized or identified as racism, not even by the people who are targeted. The initiators also reported that
the stories posted under #SchauHin made people who were not directly affected by everyday racism aware that they sometimes spoke in unconsciously
racist ways themselves.
The Limits of Online Social Media Campaigns
Although use of the Internet to circumvent the gatekeepers of the press, radio, and television enables minorities to be seen and heard, it also gives other
users access to the public. For example, the #SchauHin campaign was temporarily hijacked by users who spewed racist slogans or presented themselves
as victims of reverse racism. Anti-Muslim racists, antisemites, and immigration opponents are also active in forums and blogs and network on social
media platforms such as Facebook, which they use to disseminate racist and
discriminatory content. In its reports, the Council of Europe has expressed
concern about the increasing number of calls to violence and the hate speech
directed against various groups on the Internet. The 2014 Annual Report of
the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) confirms
that there is growing sympathy for extreme right-wing groups.12
Although racist movements meet with vocal opposition in the public, such
problems point to the limits of the Internet. There is a need to create more
awareness of right-wing racism, everyday racism, and marginalization in and
11 Trending topics is a list on Twitter that identifies important topics on the basis of the
number of tweets.
12 See Annual Report on ECRI’s Activities, 7, accessed 20 July 2015, http://www.coe.int/t/
dghl/monitoring/ecri/activities/Annual_Reports/Annual%20report%202014.pdf.
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Shion Kumai
through the mainstream media. At the same time, it is important to question
such social structures and provide information about them in all spheres of
life, especially in the education system.
Conclusion
Samantha Asumadu provided an accurate summary of the most important
paths leading to greater diversity. Newspapers need to pay greater attention
to how they use language when reporting on people from immigrant backgrounds. They need to hire more women and individuals from immigrant
families and appoint them to higher positions. Furthermore, there should be
more roles in films and TV series for men and women with immigrant biographies that portray these members of society as active, independent individuals who develop and grow, rather than as static characters who are caught
in stereotypes. At school, children need to be taught about race and gender
from a broad sociological perspective and learn to question critically how minorities are viewed and discussed. Children as well as adults need to be better
informed about the use of media so that they do not merely consume media
content but are able to analyze it critically.
The various initiatives and projects here mentioned have started an important discussion. They have shown ways to give people from immigrant backgrounds greater visibility in media productions as members of society. But
there is still a long way to go before it becomes perfectly natural for all of the
citizens of an immigration society to be addressed and portrayed in appropriate ways. In order to achieve this goal, it is necessary not only to create awareness in the media industry but also to ensure that we have fertile soil in all of
society for a critical discourse and a peaceful coexistence.
References
Print Sources
Butterwegge, Christoph. “Migrationsberichterstattung, Medienpädagogik und politische Bildung.” In Massenmedien, Migration und Integration, edited by C. Butterwegge and G. Hentges,
187–238. Wiesbaden: Springer-Verlag, 2006.
Eichhorn, Wolfgang. Agenda-Setting-Prozesse, eine theoretische Analyse individueller und gesellschaftlicher Themenstrukturierung. 2nd edition. Munich: Verlag Reinhard Fischer, 2005.
Accessed 4 August 2015. epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/734/1/AgendaSettingProzesse.pdf.
Geißler, Rainer, and Horst Pöttker, eds. Massenmedien und die Integration ethnischer Minderheiten. Bielefeld: transcript, 2009.
225
Hafez, Kai. “Mediengesellschaft-Wissensgesellschaft?” In Islamfeindlichkeit: Wenn die Grenzen der Kritik verschwimmen, edited by Thorsten Gerald Schneiders, 101–120. Wiesbaden:
Springer-Verlag, 2009.
Jäger, Siegfried. “Medien und Straftaten. Vorschläge zur Vermeidung diskriminierender Berichterstattung über Einwanderer und Flüchtlinge.” Ph.D. diss., University of DuisburgEssen, 1998.
Luhmann, Niklas. The Reality of the Mass Media. Cambridge, UK : Polity, 2000.
Schiffer, Sabine. “Zum medialen Umgang mit dem antiislamisch motivierten Mord an Marwa
El-Sherbini in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz.” Institut für Medienverantwortung, 15 December 2009. Accessed 20 July 2015. http://www.medienverantwortung.de/wpcontent/uploads/2009/12/20091215_Medien-MordAnMarwa.pdf.
Trebbe, Joachim. Ethnische Minderheiten, Massenmedien und Integration: Eine Untersuchung
massenmedialer Repräsentation und Medienwirkungen. Wiesbaden: Springer-Verlag, 2009.
Internet Sources
ECRI . “Annual Report on ECRI’s Activities.” Accessed 20 July 2015. http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/
monitoring/ecri/activities/Annual_Reports/Annual%20report%202014.pdf.
Grimme Online Award. Accessed 29 July 2015. http://www.grimme-institut.de/html/index.
php?id=33.
Grimme Online Award. Recipients 2012. Accessed 20 July 2015. http://www.grimme-institut.
de/html/index.php?id=1430.
Media Diversified. Accessed 20 July 2015. http://mediadiversified.org/.
Media Diversified. Experts directory. Accessed 3 October 2015. http://directory.mediadiver
sified.org/.
Mediendienst und Integration. “Journalisten mit Migrationshintergrund.” Accessed 20 July
2015. http://mediendienst-integration.de/integration/medien.html.
Medienkommission der Landesanstalt für Medien Nordrhein-Westfalen. “Wo die Medien sein
sollten.” Accessed 20 July 2015. http://medienpolitik.eu/cms/media/pdf/MedienGesellschaft
Medien5.pdf.
MiGAZIN. http://www.migazin.de/.
Neue deutsche Medienmacher. http://www.neuemedienmacher.de/.
Neue deutsche Medienmacher. Vielfaltfinder. Accessed 20 July 2015. https://www.vielfalt
finder.de/.
Saha, Anamik. “Wir brauchen andere Geschichten in den Medien.” Accessed 20 July 2015.
http://mediendienst-integration.de/artikel/anamik-saha-kommentar-ueber-medien-undvielfalt-in-grossbritannien.html.
#SchauHin. Accessed 20 July 2015. http://schauhin.tumblr.com/about.
Shion Kumai has been pursuing her master’s degree in sociocultural studies at Viadrina
European University since 2014. For her bachelor’s degree in cultural studies, she specialized in media, migration, and the discourse analysis of print media and the press
coverage of Islam. In 2014, seeking to move beyond theory, she joined Neue deutsche
Medienmacher, an initiative that promotes greater diversity in the media. There she
has been involved in developing and regularly updating a glossary of terms with detailed explanations for journalists to use in covering news events in Germany.
Shion Kumai
Wege zu mehr Vielfalt in den Medien
Hindernisse und Möglichkeiten für
die journalistische Praxis in der Berichterstattung
über Migrationsthemen
»Was wir über unsere Gesellschaft, ja über die Welt, in der wir leben, wissen,
wissen wir durch die Massenmedien.«1 Dieses berühmte Zitat des Soziologen
Niklas Luhmann impliziert, dass Medien eine gesellschaftliche Verantwortung für unser Wissen tragen. Erst was mithilfe der Medien sicht- und hörbar in die Öffentlichkeit gelangt und damit allen zugänglich wird, kann von
den Rezipient*innen in ihr Weltbild integriert werden. Medien sind also eine
wichtige Informations- und Wissensquelle, weil sie als Vermittler von Ereignissen und Nachrichten für ein breites Publikum dienen. Journalist*innen
wählen Themen aus, selektieren Informationen und ordnen Ereignisse in
Kontexte ein. Reale Geschehnisse werden interpretierend vermittelt, basierend auf gängigen Deutungsmustern. Ereignisse haben also zunächst nicht
von sich aus eine Bedeutung, sondern erhalten ihren Sinn erst durch einen erklärenden Kontext, der von Medienschaffenden hergestellt wird.
Auf diese Weise prägen Medien die öffentliche Meinungsbildung und konstruieren unsere gesellschaftliche Realität. Sie sind in einem hohen Maße an
der Wahrnehmung verschiedener Menschen und Gruppen beteiligt. Dementsprechend sollten Medien ein Spiegel der Gesellschaft sein, in dem sich die
Vielfalt der Bevölkerung wiederfinden muss. Wie jedoch verschiedene Studien2 belegen, ist die Diversität der Einwanderungsgesellschaft weder in der
1 Niklas Luhmann, Die Realität der Massenmedien, Opladen 1996, S. 9.
2 Siehe bspw. Christoph Butterwegge, Migrationsberichterstattung, Medienpädagogik und
politische Bildung, in: Christoph Butterwegge/Gudrun Hentges (Hrsg.), Massenmedien,
Migration und Integration, Wiesbaden 2006; Rainer Geißler/Horst Pöttker, Massenmedien und die Integration ethnischer Minderheiten, Bielefeld 2009; Siegfried Jäger, Medien
und Straftaten. Vorschläge zur Vermeidung diskriminierender Berichterstattung über
Einwanderer und Flüchtlinge, Duisburg 1998; Joachim Trebbe, Ethnische Minderheiten, Massenmedien und Integration. Eine Untersuchung massenmedialer Repräsentation
und Medienwirkungen, Wiesbaden 2009; Kai Hafez, Mediengesellschaft-Wissensgesellschaft?, in: Thorsten Gerald Schneiders (Hrsg.), Islamfeindlichkeit. Wenn die Grenzen
der Kritik verschwimmen, Wiesbaden 2009, S. 101–120.
227
aktuellen Berichterstattung noch in den Redaktionen angekommen; Ausnahmen existieren in einzelnen Redaktionen von Sendern und Verlagen in deutschen Großstädten. Was bedeuten diese Befunde für die journalistische Praxis? Welche Interaktionen finden zwischen Theorie und Praxis statt und was
können sie bewirken?
Darüber diskutierten Journalist*innen verschiedener Medienformate im
November 2014 auf der Veranstaltung »Medien und Minderheiten. Fragen der
Repräsentativität im internationalen Vergleich« auf einem Panel zum Thema
»Strategien für eine inklusive Medienlandschaft«. Die internationale Konferenz wurde von der Akademie des Jüdischen Museums Berlin in Kooperation
mit dem Rat für Migration am 27. und 28. November 2014 in Berlin veranstaltet. Im ersten Teil des Panels zum Thema »Agenda-Setting für Minderheitenthemen« stellten Kübra Gümüşay und Jamie C. Schaerer ihre HashtagKampagne #SchauHin und Ekrem Şenol das Online-Fachmagazin MiGAZIN
vor. Die anschließende Diskussionsrunde im zweiten Teil »Blick in die Redaktionen, von der Theorie zur Praxis« bestand aus den Journalist*innen
Samantha Asumadu, René Aguigah, Daniel Bax und Rainer Munz. Moderiert
wurde das Panel von Ferda Ataman.
Die Teilnehmer*innen eröffneten Einblicke in die Medienpraxis und die damit verbundenen Herausforderungen, die das Handeln von Journalist*innen
bestimmen und einschränken können. Außerdem wurden bereits angewandte
Strategien und Ideen durch Organisationen und Initiativen für eine inklusive
Berichterstattung und Medienlandschaft erläutert und diskutiert. Die folgenden Inhalte orientieren sich an diesen Diskussionen und bieten eine Zusammenfassung der wichtigsten Aussagen.
Routinen der Berichterstattung –
Selbstverständliches hinterfragen
Obwohl Journalist*innen sich ständig mit gesellschaftlichen Veränderungen
auseinandersetzen, folgen sie bei den Themen Migration und Integration
häufig gängigen Mustern. So entwirft die aktuelle Berichterstattung durch
bestimmte Themenverknüpfungen, Bebilderungen, aber auch durch fehlende
Repräsentativität bei »normalen« Themen eher verzerrte Spiegelbilder als angemessene Darstellungen. Dieses Problem schilderte Rainer Munz, Leiter
des Hauptstadtstudios von RTL und n-tv: »Wann haben wir das letzte Mal in
einem Beitrag, wenn es um Intellektuelle ging, eine Frau mit einem muslimischen Hintergrund, mit Kopftuch gezeigt? Ich würde mal sagen, in keiner
unserer Nachrichtensendungen haben wir das gemacht. Umgekehrt aber
greift man schnell mal nach einem Straßenbild von Neukölln mit Kopftuch,
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Shion Kumai
wenn wir versuchen, Dinge zu bebildern.« Dabei spiele manchmal auch der
redaktionelle Zeitdruck eine Rolle. »Das sind Punkte, wo wir selber uns in
den Redaktionen oft an die eigene Nase fassen müssen!«
Menschen mit Migrationsgeschichte werden in der Berichterstattung überproportional häufig mit negativen Themen in Zusammenhang gebracht.
Gleichzeitig sind sie selten Protagonisten in Berichten, in denen es nicht um
Migration geht. So entstehen Stereotype oder werden verstärkt. Sogenannte
Text-Bild-Kombinationen stellen Zusammenhänge her, die auf verkürzten
Klischees beruhen und als selbstverständlich vorausgesetzt werden. So ist
es Routine geworden, Themen über »Integration« mit Kopftuch tragenden
Frauen zu bebildern, wodurch bestimmte Gruppen wie Muslim*innen in den
Vordergrund gerückt werden. Daniel Bax, Politikredakteur bei der taz und
Mitglied im Vorstand der »Neuen deutschen Medienmacher« – ein Zusammenschluss von Journalist*innen, die sich für mehr Vielfalt in den Medien
einsetzen – erklärt in diesem Zusammenhang die Bedeutung von Nachrichtenwerten: »Es muss außergewöhnlich sein. Die meisten Medien richten sich
nach Negativereignissen, Gewalt, Krieg, Konflikt, das sind Themen, die für
Medien interessant sind. Der normale Alltag, der unspektakulär ist, spielt
meistens keine Rolle. Das sind so die alltäglichen Medienmechanismen, mit
denen man zu tun hat.«
Menschen mit Migrationshintergrund sollten allerdings nicht nur auf einen
Teil ihrer vermeintlichen oder tatsächlichen Identität reduziert werden, argumentiert auch René Aguigah, Leiter der Abteilung »Kultur und Gesellschaft«
bei Deutschlandradio Kultur. Es sei wichtig, dass andere Narrative verwendet würden: »Ich glaube, dass es wünschenswert wäre, für viele Journalisten,
Autoren und Autorinnen, sich mal andere Geschichten auszudenken.« Als
Beispiel, wie die Vielfalt in der Bevölkerung als Normalität dargestellt werden
kann, nennt Rainer Munz einen Beitrag zum Thema Mindestlohn, bei dem
eine Person mit Migrationshintergrund zu ihrer Einstellung und ihrem Berufsalltag befragt wird, ohne dass explizit auf die Herkunft eingegangen wird.
Die Menschen sollten nicht über Differenzen betrachtet, sondern als Teil der
Gesellschaft sowie als aktiv handelnde und kompetente Individuen wahrgenommen werden.
In diesem Sinne haben die Neuen deutschen Medienmacher eine OnlineExpertendatenbank entwickelt, in der Fachleute mit Migrationsgeschichte
bezüglich verschiedener Themenbereiche angefragt werden können. So heißt
es auf ihrem Flyer: »Wir sind keine Experten für Islam, Integration und
Gemüsehandel, sondern für Deichbau, deutsche Sprache und Mietrecht.«3
3 Vielfaltfinder, Neue deutsche Medienmacher, https://www.vielfaltfinder.de/ (letzter Zugriff 28.7.2015).
229
Sorgfältige Recherche, differenzierte Bezeichnungen und
eine inklusive Sprache
In den meist emotional geführten Diskursen über Migration ist eine »Versachlichung der Debatten« notwendig, erklärt Ferda Ataman, Leiterin der
Informations-Plattform Mediendienst Integration für Journalist*innen. Fakten und Zahlen sind wichtig, um zu informieren oder Argumentationen zu
untermauern. Erforderlich ist jedoch die korrekte Einordnung von Zahlen,
außerdem müssen Zusammenhänge sorgfältig recherchiert werden. Daher
hat der Mediendienst wichtige Informationen zu Themen wie Einwanderung
zusammengestellt und macht anhand von konkreten Artikeln regelmäßig
deutlich, wo die Probleme in der Berichterstattung liegen. Durch Faktenchecks übernehmen sie eine Art Kontrollfunktion und machen auf falsche
oder versäumte Recherche aufmerksam.
Bei der Berichterstattung in Migrationskontexten ist außerdem der Gebrauch einer sensiblen Sprache notwendig. Wie in allen anderen Themenbereichen müssen präzise und differenzierte Bezeichnungen verwendet werden. Die Neuen deutschen Medienmacher haben für diesen Zweck ein Glossar
mit Formulierungshilfen veröffentlicht. Dort findet man auf der Basis journa listischer Erfahrungen herausgearbeitete Definitionen, Alternativbegriffe,
differenzierte Bezeichnungen, aber auch Vorschläge, wie man sowohl inhaltlich als auch sprachlich die Diversität der Menschen widerspiegeln und damit
den Vorstellungen bzw. Darstellungen von homogenen Gruppen entgegenwirken kann. Eine differenzierte Sprache kann auch zu einer differenzierten
Betrachtung beitragen.
So ist in vielen Fällen zum Beispiel die Nennung der Herkunft gar nicht
notwendig. In der Kriminalitätsberichterstattung wird die tatsächliche oder
vermeintliche Herkunft von nicht-weißen Deutschen jedoch häufig genannt,
selbst wenn diese Information für den Tathergang irrelevant ist. Auf diese
Weise wird das Vorurteil »Ausländer sind kriminell« immer wieder bestärkt
und wiederholt. Die ethnische Zugehörigkeit der Opfer von Straf taten wird
dagegen selten erwähnt. Das führt zu verschleiernden Momenten wie bei der
anfänglichen Berichterstattung über den Mord an Marwa El-Sherbini im Gerichtssaal in Dresden.4 Es dauerte mehrere Tage, bis das anti-islamische Motiv des Täters thematisiert und deutlich wurde. Erst als Stimmen im Netz
auf Blogs und Foren laut wurden, reagierten die etablierten Medien. »Die
4 Vgl. Sabine Schiffer, Zum medialen Umgang mit dem antiislamisch motivierten Mord an
Marwa El-Sherbini in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz, Institut für Medienverantwortung, 15.12.2009, http://www.medienverantwortung.de/wpcontent/uploads/2009/
12/20091215_Medien-MordAnMarwa.pdf (letzter Zugriff 20.7.2015).
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Shion Kumai
Perspektive der Massenmedien ist eine, die die Minderheitenperspektive
nicht einschließt«, diagnostiziert Daniel Bax.
Bei der rassistisch motivierten Mordserie des NSU übernahmen die Medien die »Erkenntnisse« der Ermittlungsbehörden unkritisch und verstärkten
spekulative Mutmaßungen: Der von Journalist*innen geprägte und häufig
verwendete Begriff »Döner-Morde« ist in hohem Maße ausgrenzend und diskriminierend. Solche Begrifflichkeiten machen die Gefahr von stereotypen
Denkstrukturen deutlich. Hier zeigt sich, dass einseitige Perspektiven den
Blick auf Probleme einschränken. So äußerten türkischsprachige Medien und
Communities schon vor der Selbstenttarnung des NSU den Verdacht, dass es
sich um Morde mit rechtsradikalem Hintergrund handeln könnte. Ob Rassismus also ein Thema in den Redaktionen ist, hängt nach Daniel Bax auch damit zusammen, wie »vielfältig die Redaktion aufgestellt ist«.
Mehr Diversität in der Medienproduktion
Obwohl rund 20 Prozent der Bevölkerung eine Einwanderungsbiografie aufweisen, sind laut Untersuchungen zurzeit nur circa zwei bis drei Prozent
der Medienschaffenden nicht-weiße Deutsche.5 Um diesem Ungleichgewicht
entgegenzuwirken, bieten die Neuen deutschen Medienmacher ein Mentoring-Programm, das angehende Journalist*innen mit Migrationsgeschichte
fördert und Kontakte vermittelt, die in diesem Berufsfeld wichtig sind. Nachwuchsförderung findet mittlerweile auch in den verschiedenen Medienanstalten statt: Der WDR geht mit gutem Beispiel voran und hat mit seinem Förderprogramm bereits erreicht, dass 20 Prozent der Neueinstellungen Menschen
mit Migrationshintergrund sind. Außerdem ist dort ein Integrationsbeauftragter tätig. Auch RTL verfügt über ein Nachwuchsförderprogramm für angehende Journalist*innen mit Einwanderungsgeschichte. Bei Deutschlandradio Kultur sieht es jedoch noch ziemlich »grau« aus. Zwar gibt es ein paar
Volontäre, doch ansonsten fühlt sich René Aguigah dort »mit seiner Hautfarbe recht einsam«.
Inhalte werden aber nicht zwangsweise diverser, nur weil mehr Menschen
mit Migrationshintergrund eingestellt werden, zumal es nicht darum geht, deren Zuständigkeit auf Migrationsthemen festzuschreiben. Der Wissenschaftler
Anamik Saha beschäftigt sich mit den Produktionsbedingungen in Medien,
die zu stereotypen Darstellungen führen, und stellt fest, dass Journalist*innen
5 Mediendienst und Integration, Medien in der Einwanderungsgesellschaft, Journalisten
mit Migrationshintergrund, 2014 http://mediendienst-integration.de/integration/medien.
html (letzter Zugriff 20.7.2015).
231
mit Einwanderungsgeschichte häufig dazu tendieren, sich an die Produktionskultur anzupassen und somit ebenfalls Stereotype zu reproduzieren.6 Das
heißt, es reicht nicht, nur eine personelle Vielfalt anzustreben, gleichzeitig
muss ein Umdenken die Produktionskultur betreffend stattfinden.
Was kann und wird in Mainstream-Medien getan?
Redaktionskonferenzen schaffen einen Rahmen, um Darstellungsformen von
Vielfalt zu diskutieren und zu überdenken. Die taz hat sich z. B. schon früh
in Redaktionssitzungen mit dem Thema Frauen beschäftigt und sich mit sexistischer Sprache und der Repräsentanz von Frauen in den Artikeln auseinandergesetzt. Als Konsequenz hat die taz als erste Zeitung das Gendern
eingeführt. Gendern ist ein aktiver Prozess, Menschen mit einzubeziehen
und über die Sprache Realitäten sichtbar zu machen. Im Deutschen gibt es
verschiedene Formen und Schreibweisen wie bspw. das Binnen-I, mit Sternchen oder dem gender-gap, je nach Variante wird auf die exklusiv männliche
Schreibweise im Deutschen verzichtet und eine inklusive Schreibweise verwendet, die beim Sternchen und der Schreibweise mit dem Unterstrich nicht
nur Frauen mit einbezieht. Die verschiedenen Modelle der geschlechtersensiblen Sprache verfolgen also unterschiedliche Ansätze. Als Journalist*in ist
man Daniel Bax zufolge gezwungen abzuwägen, ob man die Leser*innen erreichen oder aufklären bzw. weiterbilden will. Sprachliche Veränderungen
stoßen immer noch häufig auf Ablehnung in der Bevölkerung. Diese Diskussion muss also sowohl in den Medien als auch gesamtgesellschaftlich weiter
geführt werden.
Doch Konferenzen allein bieten nicht genügend Raum, um jedes Bild und
all die komplexen Problematiken zu besprechen. Es müssen also immer wieder Workshops oder Weiterbildungsmöglichkeiten angeboten werden, in denen man lernt, vermeintlich Selbstverständliches zu hinterfragen. Wie René
Aguigah berichtet, gibt es solche Angebote bereits: Kürzlich wurde in seiner
Redaktion im Deutschlandradio Kultur eine Serie gestartet, die sich mit
Kriegsvokabular auseinandersetzt und z. B. über die umstrittene Eigenbezeichnung »Islamischer Staat« diskutiert, welche durch die Medienberichterstattung unweigerlich verbreitet wird.
Was die Sichtbarkeit der Vielfalt beim Personal und beim Programm betrifft, sind private Sender den öffentlich-rechtlichen voraus. So sprechen
6 Vgl. Anamik Saha, Wir brauchen andere Geschichten in den Medien, 2015 Mediendienst und
Integration, http://mediendienst-integration.de/artikel/anamik-saha-kommentar-uebermedien-und-vielfalt-in-grossbritannien.html (letzter Zugriff 20.7.2015).
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Shion Kumai
Formate wie »The Voice of Germany« auf Pro7 und Sat1, in denen die Teilnehmer*innen und Gewinner*innen nicht nur Herkunftsdeutsche sind, ein
breiteres Publikum an. Moderator*innen wie Aiman Abdallah, der Gallileo,
eine Wissenssendung auf Pro7 moderiert, waren schon früh keine Ausnahme
mehr. Aber auch die öffentlich-rechtlichen Sender haben mittlerweile ein Bewusstsein für Diversity entwickelt und beginnen umzudenken.
Deutschland, ein Einzelfall?
Die beschriebenen Probleme, die sowohl die inhaltliche als auch die strukturelle Ebene betreffen, gibt es in anderen europäischen Ländern wie Großbritannien ebenfalls. Samantha Asumadu, Dokumentarfilmerin und Journalistin u. a. bei CNN, Deutsche Welle und Agence France Presse, stellte bei der
Lektüre verschiedener britischer Zeitungen fest, dass rund 95 Prozent aller
Titelseiten von weißen Journalist*innen verfasst werden und die Minderheitenperspektive thematisch nicht einschließen. Die Titelseite ist die wichtigste
Seite, da sie als Eyecatcher fungiert, die Themen der Gesamtausgabe ankündigt und damit das Interesse der potenziellen Käufer*innen wecken soll. Von
der Titelseite, den ausgewählten Themen, den Bebilderungen bis hin zur Werbung ist fast alles von Weißen für und über Weiße. Eine einfache Analyse
einer Tageszeitung ergab, dass nur vier Bilder nicht-weiße Menschen abbildeten. Auf zwei wurden international auftretende amerikanische Musiker gezeigt und auf den anderen beiden Fotos wurde Curry verkauft. Auch hier wird
deutlich, dass es auf der einen Seite an Repräsentativität fehlt und auf der anderen Seite Klischees bedient werden, welche die Menschen auf einen tatsächlichen oder vermeintlichen Teilaspekt ihrer Identität reduzieren.
Asumadu sieht darin ein großes Problem: »Medien können die Gesellschaft nicht reflektieren, wenn die Gesellschaft nicht in den Medien widergespiegelt wird.« So startete sie 2013 die erfolgreiche Social-media-Kampagne
#AllWhiteFrontPages auf Twitter. Viele schrieben unter dem Hashtag, dass
ihnen diese Tatsache vorher nie aufgefallen war. Um weiter ein Bewusstsein
dafür zu schaffen, gründete sie außerdem die gemeinnützige Organisation
Media Diversified. Ihre Online-Plattform bietet Journalist*innen of Color die
Möglichkeit, ihre Artikel zu veröffentlichen und einen Beitrag zum Diskurs
zu leisten. Außerdem können diese über eine Datenbank angefragt werden.7
7 Experts directory, Media Diversified, http://directory.mediadiversified.org/ (letzter Zugriff
3.10.2015).
233
Themen platzieren und Bewusstsein schaffen
über das Internet
Auch in Deutschland gibt es ähnliche Plattformen und Kampagnen, auf denen
Menschen mit oder ohne Einwanderungsgeschichte über das Internet ihrer
Stimme Gehör verleihen. »Die ganzen Debatten um Blackfacing, Racial Profiling und Alltagsrassismus wären wahrscheinlich nicht von den MainstreamMedien aufgenommen worden, wenn es nicht Initiativen gegeben hätte, die
das auf die Tapete gebracht haben«, erklärt Daniel Bax. »Agenda-Setting, eine
klassische Aufgabe der Massenmedien, wird teilweise aus dem Netz übernommen und wir sind diejenigen, die davon profitieren. Insofern lohnt es sich, sich
anzuschauen, was jenseits der etablierten Medien passiert.«
Die Theorie des Agenda-Settings aus der Kommunikationswissenschaft
geht davon aus, dass Medien die Meinungsbildung beeinflussen, indem sie
vorgeben, welche Themen in der Gesellschaft relevant sind.8 Journalist*innen
fungieren auch als eine Art Torwächter*innen, die Informationen an die Öffentlichkeit bringen oder ignorieren, wodurch sie den Informationsfluss regulieren. Als sogenannte Gate-keeper*innen beeinflussen sie, ob und wie aktuell ein Thema öffentlich werden kann. Vertreter*innen von Minderheiten sind
aber selten in der Position von Gate-keeper*innen. In etablierten Medien finden auch deshalb alltägliche Themen, die Minderheiten betreffen, kaum Raum.
»Das ist ein Problem, das wir auch im MiGAZIN beobachten. Viele Journalisten treten an uns heran, festangestellte Journalisten, weil sie ihre Themen in ihren eigenen Blättern nicht unterkriegen. ›Zu speziell‹, ›interessiert
nicht‹, heißt es. Die Zielgruppe in den Mainstream-Medien hat immer noch
keinen Migrationshintergrund«, erklärt Ekrem Şenol. Er ist Gründer des
Online-Fachmagazins MiGAZIN, das seit 2008 über Themen rund um Migration und Integration berichtet. Ziel ist es, »Themen anzusprechen, die im
Mainstream selten oder gar nicht vorkommen bzw. verzerrt dargestellt werden«. Das Magazin erfreut sich großer Beliebtheit und wird sogar von Politiker*innen im Bundestag zitiert. 2012 erhielt MiGAZIN für seine Leistungen
und »qualitativ hochwertigen Texte«9 den Grimme-Online-Award.10 Şenols
8 Vgl. Wolfgang Eichhorn, Agenda-Setting-Prozesse: Eine theoretische Analyse individueller und gesellschaftlicher Themenstrukturierung, München 20052 (digitale Ausgabe)
URL :http://equb.ub.uni-nuenchen.de/archive/00000734/ (letzter Zugriff 18.7.2015).
9 Grimme Online Award, Preisträger 2012, http://www.grimme-institut.de/html/index.
php?id=1430 (letzter Zugriff 20.7.2015).
10 Der Grimme Online Award ist eine renommierte Auszeichnung für herausragende publizistische Online-Angebote, die seit 2001 jährlich vom Grimme-Institut vergeben
wird. Siehe auch: http://www.grimme-institut.de/html/index.php?id=33 (letzter Zugriff
29.7.2015).
234
Shion Kumai
persönlicher Antrieb für das Projekt war »der tägliche Frust, die Empörung,
der Ärger«, wenn er Nachrichten sah oder Zeitung las. »Ich habe mich oftmals hilflos gefühlt, weil ich nicht teilhaben konnte an dieser Debatte.« So
entschloss er sich, die Debatten nicht mehr nur passiv hinzunehmen, sondern
aktiv zu werden.
Das Magazin erreicht nicht nur Menschen mit Einwanderungsgeschichte;
etwa 50 Prozent der Leser sind Herkunftsdeutsche, wie sich in einer Leserbefragung herausstellte. Auch die Redaktion setzt sich aus Menschen mit und
ohne Migrationshintergrund zusammen. Sie machen die Menschen bestmöglich sichtbar. Auf der Plattform werden Autoren bspw. nicht nur namentlich genannt, sondern auch mit einem Foto gezeigt. Oft sind Journalistinnen
darunter, die ein Kopftuch tragen. »Bei den ersten Fotos, die wir präsentiert haben, haben sich die Leser noch überrascht gezeigt: ›Wow, die kann ja
Deutsch! Und auch noch Schreiben!‹ Irgendwann hat sich das auch gelegt. Irgendwann haben die Leser gemerkt, ›Moment mal! Das ist gar keine Ausnahme!‹ – Das ist also irgendwo auch eine Erziehungssache«, berichtet Ekrem
Şenol.
Einen anderen Weg, Gate-keeper*innen des Mainstream-Journalismus zu
umgehen und Themen öffentlichkeitswirksam zu platzieren, bieten soziale
Medien. Kübra Gümüşay, Journalistin, Bloggerin und Netz-Aktivistin, und
Jamie C. Schaerer, Politikwissenschaftlerin und Vorstandsmitglied der Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland und des Europäischen Netzwerks
gegen Rassismus, starteten 2013 auf Twitter die Kampagne #SchauHin mit
dem Ziel, Erfahrungen des Alltagsrassismus sichtbar zu machen, ähnlich wie
der #Aufschrei den alltäglichen Sexismus. Alltagsrassismus ist genau wie Sexismus ein schwer greifbares Phänomen, das sich nicht einfach in Zahlen erfassen lässt, weswegen selten in der Öffentlichkeit darüber gesprochen wird.
Gümüşay erläutert: »Wir wollten über eine alltägliche Erfahrung sprechen,
ohne dass man das reduzieren kann auf eine einzelne Situation, denn dieser alltägliche Rassismus ist etwas, was jeden Tag aktuell ist, jeden Tag relevant ist.«
Innerhalb kürzester Zeit teilten mehrere Tausend Menschen ihre Geschichten, und der Hashtag blieb drei Tage lang »Trending Topic«11 in Deutschland,
was bei sozialen Themen ganz selten vorkommt. »Durch das Teilen dieser Erfahrungen wurde die Erfahrung von der singulären, individuellen Ebene auf
eine gesamtgesellschaftliche Ebene gehoben, und die Verantwortung damit
umzugehen lag nicht mehr nur bei den Menschen, die das täglich erfahren haben, sondern bei der Gesamtgesellschaft.« So wurden rassistische Strukturen
in der Gesellschaft öffentlich sichtbar gemacht.
11 »Trending Topics« ist eine Liste von Twitter, die anhand der Tweets aktuelle und wichtige
Themen ermittelt.
235
Durch das »Taggen« von Journalist*innen wurden sie auf die Relevanz des
Themas aufmerksam gemacht. Auf diese Weise ist es den Initiatorinnen gelungen, ein Thema, das normalerweise nur schwer Zugang findet, in den Mainstream-Medien zu platzieren, sodass es über die Berichterstattung Teil einer
öffentlichen Debatte geworden ist. Es geht aber vor allem auch um Sensibilisierung für Alltagsrassismus, denn Rassismus äußert sich nicht nur in rechtsradikalen Formen. Subtile Formen werden häufig nicht als Rassismus benannt
oder erkannt, auch manchmal von den Betroffenen nicht. Auf der anderen
Seite, berichten die Initiator*innen, gab es auch Menschen, die selbst nicht
von Alltagsrassismus betroffen waren, denen aber durch die Erzählung unter dem #SchauHin bewusst wurde, dass sie sich gelegentlich unbewusst rassistisch äußern.
Grenzen von Online-Kampagnen in sozialen Medien
Gate-Keeper von Presse und Rundfunk über das Internet zu umgehen, ermöglicht zwar Hör- und Sichtbarkeit für Minderheiten, aber auch Zugang zur Öffentlichkeit für andere Nutzer. So wurde die Hashtag-Kampagne #SchauHin
kurzzeitig von Usern »gehijacked«, die mit rassistischen Sprüchen herumpöbelten und sich selbst als Opfer eines umgekehrten Rassismus darstellten.
Antimuslimische Rassist*innen, Antisemit*innen und Einwanderungsgegner*innen formieren sich im Netz auf Foren oder Blogs und vernetzen sich
über soziale Medien wie Facebook, über die diskriminierende und rassistische
Botschaften verbreitet werden. Mit Sorge berichtet der Europarat von steigenden Gewaltaufrufen im Netz und Hasstiraden gegen verschiedene Gruppen:
Im Jahresbericht 2014 der Europäischen Kommission gegen Rassismus und
Intoleranz (ECRI) wird die steigende Sympathie für rechtsradikale Gruppen
bestätigt.12
Zwar wird rassistischen Bewegungen lautstark widersprochen, dennoch
zeigt diese Problematik die Grenzen des Internets auf. Es besteht somit die
Notwendigkeit, mehr Bewusstsein in und durch die etablierten Medien zu
schaffen für Rassismus, Alltagsrassismus und Ausgrenzung. Gleichzeitig gilt
es, auf allen Ebenen, insbesondere auch im Bildungsbereich derartige gesellschaftliche Strukturen zu hinterfragen und darüber aufzuklären.
12 Vgl. Annual Report on ECRI’s activities, Straßburg 2015, S. 7 ff., http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/
monitoring/ecri/activities/Annual_Reports/Annual%20report%202014.pdf (letzter Zugriff 20.7.2015).
236
Shion Kumai
Fazit
Samantha Asumadu hat die wichtigsten Ansatzpunkte für Wege zu mehr
Vielfalt treffend zusammengefasst: Zeitungen müssen auf den Gebrauch der
Sprache achten, wenn sie über Menschen mit Einwanderungsgeschichte berichten sowie mehr Frauen und Menschen aus Einwandererfamilien anstellen
und auch in höheren Positionen besetzen. In Filmen und TV-Serien muss es
mehr Rollen für Männer und Frauen mit Einwanderungsbiografie geben, in
denen sie als eigenständige aktive Charaktere porträtiert werden, die wachsen
und sich entwickeln, statt als statische Charaktere, die in Stereotypen gefangen sind. In der Gesellschaft müssen Kinder in der Schule über breite soziologische Perspektiven zu Fragen von race and gender aufgeklärt werden und
zu hinterfragen lernen, wie über Minderheiten gedacht und gesprochen wird.
Kinder, aber auch Erwachsene müssen besser über die Mediennutzung informiert werden, damit sie Medieninhalte nicht nur konsumieren, sondern in
der Lage sind, sie kritisch einzuordnen.
Den Initiativen und verschiedenen Projekten ist es bereits gelungen, eine
wichtige Diskussion in Gang zu bringen. Sie zeigen die Möglichkeiten, Menschen mit Einwanderungsgeschichte sowohl in der Berichterstattung als auch
in der Medienproduktion als Teil dieser Gesellschaft sichtbar zu machen. Aber
es ist noch ein weiter Weg bis zur Selbstverständlichkeit, alle Bürger*innen
der Einwanderungsgesellschaft anzusprechen und angemessen darzustellen.
Um dieses Ziel zu erreichen, ist es notwendig, nicht nur ein Bewusstsein im
Medienbereich zu schaffen, sondern gesamtgesellschaftlich einen fruchtbaren
Boden zu bereiten, der einen kritischen Diskurs und zugleich aber auch ein
friedliches und bereicherndes Zusammenleben ermöglicht.
Bibliografie
Butterwegge, Christoph: Migrationsberichterstattung, Medienpädagogik und politische Bildung. In: Christoph Butterwegge/Gudrun Hentges (Hrsg.), Massenmedien, Migration und
Integration, Springer-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2006.
Eichhorn, Wolfgang: Agenda-Setting-Prozesse. Eine theoretische Analyse individueller und gesellschaftlicher Themenstrukturierung, Verlag Reinhard Fischer, München 20052 (digitale
Ausgabe) URL: http://equb.ub.uni-muenchen.de/archive/00000734/ (letzter Zugriff 18.7.2015).
Geißler, Rainer/Pöttker, Horst (Hrsg.): Massenmedien und die Integration ethnischer Minderheiten, transcript, Bielefeld 2009.
Hafez, Kai: Mediengesellschaft-Wissensgesellschaft? In: Thorsten Gerald Schneiders (Hrsg.),
Islamfeindlichkeit. Wenn die Grenzen der Kritik verschwimmen, Springer-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2009, S. 101–120.
Jäger, Siegfried: Medien und Straftaten. Vorschläge zur Vermeidung diskriminierender Berichterstattung über Einwanderer und Flüchtlinge, Diss., Duisburg 1998.
237
Luhmann, Niklas: Die Realität der Massenmedien, Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1996.
Saha, Anamik: Wir brauchen andere Geschichten in den Medien, 2015 Mediendienst und
Integration, http://mediendienst-integration.de/artikel/anamik-saha-kommentar-uebermedien-und-vielfalt-in-grossbritannien.html (letzter Zugriff 20.7.2015).
Schiffer, Sabine: Zum medialen Umgang mit dem antiislamisch motivierten Mord an Marwa
El-Sherbini in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz, Institut für Medienverantwortung,
15.12.2009, http://www.medienverantwortung.de/wpcontent/uploads/2009/12/20091215_
Medien-MordAnMarwa.pdf (letzter Zugriff 20.7.2015).
Trebbe, Joachim: Ethnische Minderheiten, Massenmedien und Integration. Eine Untersuchung massenmedialer Repräsentation und Medienwirkungen, Springer-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2009.
Webseiten
ECRI, Annual Report on ECRI’s activities, Straßburg 2015, http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/
monitoring/ecri/activities/Annual_Reports/Annual%20report%202014.pdf (letzter Zugriff 20.7.2015).
Grimme Online Award, http://www.grimme-institut.de/html/index.php?id=33 (letzter Zugriff 29.7.2015).
Grimme Online Award, Preisträger 2012, http://www.grimme-institut.de/html/index.php?id=
1430 (letzter Zugriff 20.7.2015).
Media diversified, http://mediadiversified.org/ (letzter Zugriff 20.7.2015).
Mediendienst und Integration, Medien in der Einwanderungsgesellschaft, Journalisten mit
Migrationshintergrund, 2014 http://mediendienst-integration.de/integration/medien.html
(letzter Zugriff 20.7.2015).
Medienkommission der Landesanstalt für Medien Nordrhein-Westfalen, Wo die Medien
sein sollten, 2010, http://medienpolitik.eu/cms/media/pdf/MedienGesellschaftMedien5.
pdf (letzter Zugriff 20.7.2015).
MiGAZIN, http://www.migazin.de/ (letzter Zugriff 20.7.2015).
Neue Deutsche Medienmacher, http://www.neuemedienmacher.de/ (letzter Zugriff 20.7.2015).
#SchauHin, http://schauhin.tumblr.com/about (letzter Zugriff 20.7.2015).
Vielfaltfinder, Neue deutsche Medienmacher, https://www.vielfaltfinder.de/ (letzter Zugriff
28.7.2015).
Shion Kumai ist seit 2014 Masterstudentin der Europa-Universität Viadrina im Studiengang Soziokulturelle Studien. Während ihres Bachelors in Kulturwissenschaften hat sie sich auf den Themenschwerpunkt Medien und Migration spezialisiert und
beschäftigt sich mit Diskursanalysen in Printmedien und der Berichterstattung über
Islam. Um nicht nur bei theoretischen Erkenntnissen zu bleiben, ist sie seit 2014 auch
Mitarbeiterin bei den Neuen deutschen Medienmachern, einer Initiative, die sich
für mehr Vielfalt in den Medien einsetzt. Dort ist sie an der Ausarbeitung und regelmäßigen Aktualisierung eines Glossars beteiligt, das Formulierungshilfen für die Berichterstattung im Einwanderungsland und differenzierte Begriffserklärungen bietet.

Media and Minorities. Questions on Representation from an

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