The Observatory of Islamophobia in the Media takes stock of the year 2018
24 June 2019 | Corporate news
During 2018, the informative treatment of news related to the Islamic religion and the Muslim community has improved compared to previous years. This is confirmed by the Observatory of Islamophobia in the Media, which today presented at Casa Árabe (Madrid) some of the main results of the monitoring that it has carried out during 2018 of this type of informative content in various Spanish media.
The event, presented by Karim Hauser, Casa Árabe’s coordinator of International Relations, was attended by Tommaso Chiamparino, European Commission coordinator on combating anti-Muslim hatred; Rosa Meneses, journalist specialized in the Middle East and the Maghreb and general secretary of RSF – Spanish Section; Nessrin El Hachlaf, lawyer and journalist, and Lurdes Vidal, co-director of the Observatory and director of the Arab World and Mediterranean area of the IEMed.
Vidal has presented the main results of the monitoring and analysis of information during 2018 from the newspapers El País and La Razón and from the news agencies EFE and Europa Press. She highlighted that an improvement is detected in the informative treatment of news related to the Islamic religion and the Muslim community. While in the 2017 report, 60% of the information analyzed was Islamophobic, during 2018 this percentage dropped to 43%. She also underlined that there is a decrease in gender Islamophobia in the information and opinion content of the analyzed media.
The Observatory of Islamophobia in the Media is an initiative of the Al Fanar Foundation and the IEMed, which has the support of Casa Árabe, Fundación Tres Culturas and Fundación Euroárabe de Altos Estudios. The 2018 report of the Observatory, with all the results of the 2018 exercise and analysis articles, will be published shortly.