U.K. politicians should consider regulation to tackle the tide of negative media coverage about British Muslims. This was the message from a Liverpool conference this week which examined damaging and biased news stories about Britain’s Muslim community. The event, organized by Dr. Salman Azami of Liverpool Hope University, saw academics and journalists discuss the effects of unfair and stereotyped portrayals of Muslims.

One of its key findings was the need to raise awareness on issues facing Britain’s Muslims by urging politicians to engage more with the community. Azami told Anadolu Agency he wanted the event to look at “whether the media coverage on Muslims in Britain is effective or counterproductive, whether it is sensitive or insensitive, whether it is fair or unfair”…He also urged British lawmakers to act against deliberately negative media coverage on Islam-related stories.

Speakers from different ethnic and religious backgrounds reflected on Azami’s recent work — Religion in the Media: A Linguistic Analysis — which “investigates how the three Abrahamic faiths – Christianity, Judaism and Islam – are represented in mainstream British media and analyses how members of each religious group and those with no religion receive those representations”.

Contributors at the conference discussed their experiences about negative coverage by some journalists and social media account holders.

Journalist Lauren Booth referred to what she described as “unfair” coverage by the British media after her conversion to Islam in 2010…Participants also heard that “negative presentations of Muslims by the media play into the hands of those who want to divide us” and claimed those who worked in the media often lacked “cultural understanding and sensitivity about Muslims”.

Source: Anadolu Agency