Launching of the website of the Observatory of Islamophobia in the Media
26 June 2017 | Corporate news
The Observatory of Islamophobia in the Media, a project led by the Al Fanar Foundation and the IEMed with the support of the Tres Cultures Foundation, the Arab House and the Euro-Arab Foundation, is already a reality. The website of the Observatory launched today contains information about journalistic news identified as stigmatizing the Muslim community, as well as recommendations and good practices for a more inclusive and accurate journalistic narrative.
At www.observatorioislamofobia.org you will also find its Founding Declaration, already signed by more than a dozen organizations such as the Media Diversity Institute (London), the European Association for Viewers Interests (Brussels) and the Citizens’ Platform against Islamophobia. A Declaration stating:
“We believe in a journalism that reports responsibly, that promotes interculturality and avoids the generalizations that stigmatize the entire Muslim community and that can end up laying the foundations of a social fracture that only benefits violent extremism. The signatories of this statement defends the role that good , accurate and balanced journalism, aware of its role as an opinion maker, can play in fostering an inclusive society. “
The Observatory, which has been monitoring the newspapers La Vanguardia, El Mundo, La Razón, 20 minutos, El País and Diario.es since January 2017, does not want its function to be understood “as an attack on the media but as a contribution to provide tools that facilitate the representation of a diverse society “.
But the initiative wants to go beyond simply identifying examples of Islamophobia in these media. In this sense, it also includes existing initiatives and good practices in both Spain and Europe, such as a glossary on Islam prepared by Luz Gómez, professor at the Autonomous University of Madrid and author of the Dictionary of Islam and Islamism, and offers articles on the matter drafted ad hoc for the Observatory.
In one of them, the writer and philosopher Santiago Alba Rico, says that the media are largely responsible for the rise of Islamophobia and therefore “we should require of them an informative and educational commitment (…). If we allow the construction of a Muslim as an “internal enemy”, the rule of law will be in danger and with it all vulnerable minorities and, in general, individual rights and democratic freedoms won with so many difficulties throughout the recent decades. “