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Islamophobia in the News Media

In: Social Issues

Submitted By mejia1995
Words 1731
Pages 7
Since the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York city and Washington D.C. there has been a growing trend of islamophobia in the U.S. as more and more Americans are beginning to view people who follow the faith of Islam to be either a terrorist themselves or a terrorist sympathizer. In more recent years other acts of terror have grabbed the public’s attention such as the Boston Marathon bombings, as well as the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris France. Some Americans now feel that the U.S. government should start keeping surveillance on Muslim communities. The main driving force behind this growing anti-Muslim way of thinking is the fearmongering, ratings-seeking agendas of 24 hour television news companies. Cable news networks like CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, as well as many others have over the years developed a negative bias in the way that they represent the Muslim community. Discrimination of Muslims in T.V. news cycles are harmful because it can cause potential conflicts between Muslim and non-Muslim Americans, it projects the idea that Muslim is synonymous with the word terrorist, and can lead to the marginalization of an entire ethnic group. Islamophobia is a term used to describe the close-minded prejudice against Muslims and is also defined as deep hatred of Islam and Muslims. Islamophobia has existed in the United States for decades prior to September 11, 2001, and is believed to go as far back as the 1930s as the more and more Muslims began to emigrate to the U.S. In the past two decades however islamophobia is becoming a bigger and bigger problem as the world has been plagued by a seemingly endless wave of violent and horrifying terror attacks. Being that most of these despicable crimes have been perpetrated by individuals and groups who follow an extremely distorted and corrupt form of Islam, many people in the U.S. and the rest of the

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