Summary The study indicates Muslims perpetrated 12.4 per cent of the terror attacks yet received 41.4 per ce
(Web Desk) - In a worrying discovery an academic study has revealed that a terrorist attack conducted by a Muslim receives five times more coverage from the media than one conducted by a non-Muslim in the United States.
A detailed analysis of all terrorist attacks conducted in the United States between 2011 and 2015 found out that there was a 449% increase in media attention when the attacker was a follower of Islam, reported The Independent. Through detailed examination of American newspaper coverage of every terrorist attack on US soil, the study found that while Muslims conducted just 12.4 per cent of attacks during the period studied, they received a disproportionate 41.4 per cent of news coverage.
For example, the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, which was carried out by two Muslims and killed three people, received nearly 20 per cent of all media exposure relating to American terror attacks in the five-year period while a 2012 massacre at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin that left six people dead by Wade Michael Page, a white male, received just 3.8 per cent of coverage.
Similarly, a mass shooting by Dylann Roof, another white man, at an African-American church in South Carolina, killed nine people but received only 7.4 per cent of media coverage, while an especially vicious 2014 attack by Frazier Glenn Miller on a Kansas synagogue ended with the deaths of three people but only accounted for 3.3 % of media reports.
According to researchers at Georgia State University, all of the above attacks are considered to meet widely-used definitions of terrorism.
“Regardless of other factors, attacks perpetrated by Muslims receive a disproportionate amount of media coverage,” they wrote in the study.
The authors of the study claimed that the findings discredited President Trump’s suggestion, made in February, that the media is not reporting terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims.
“When President Trump asserted that the media does not cover some terrorist attacks enough, it turns out that he was correct,” the authors wrote. “However, his assertion that attacks by Muslim perpetrators received less coverage is unsubstantiated.”
“By covering terrorist attacks by Muslims dramatically more than other incidents, media frame this type of event as more prevalent. Based on these findings, it is no wonder that Americans are so fearful of radical Islamic terrorism. Reality shows, however, that these fears are misplaced.”
While Islamophobia is not as prevalent in the United States as it is in Europe, many Muslims fear that the election of Donald Trump as US President will give rise to anti-Muslim policies in the country. This view had been further emboldened since Trump put into effect his controversial travel ban (Executive Order 13769) on seven predominantly Muslim countries.
