ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I investigate how journalism norms and practices impact on the ways stories involving Muslims are reported. By positioning journalists above and separate to their audiences, professional norms such as objectivity and balance play a critical role in legitimising journalists as independent public servants with no agenda or interests of their own beyond reporting on the news. But what if, rather than challenging misleading narratives about Muslim communities, the same norms and values reinforce the very biases they claim to counter? When it comes to Muslims, the application of journalism’s norms and values is subject to enormous contradictions in terms of who can and cannot speak, and on what terms. Rather than mitigating bias, this serves to ensure that institutionally prescribed biases can permeate throughout newspaper coverage on Muslims. In contrast, the experiences of local journalists reflected a more reflexive approach to objectivity and balance aligned to the principle of wider public interest which included Muslims as a key part of the communities they served.
