Chapel Hill shooting: Is Sabbiyah Pervez looking for an anti-Muslim problem that isn’t there?
Is the media baised? Is there an agenda? Of course. Which is why we at Anorak look at a variety of news sources. So. Following a triple murder in Chapel Hill, USA, which claimed the lives of three innocent people, all young Muslims, what did the media report?
Sabbiyah Pervez wonders in the Independent:
Chapel Hill shooting: Three young Muslims have been executed, but the media ignored it because of their religion
The lack of coverage proves that the West’s dehumanisation of Muslims is almost complete
Does Sabbiyah have an agenda? Is she a bit biased?
Are the murders of three Muslims by white atheist Craig Stephen Hicks, as is alleged, unimportant to the Western media? Was the victims’ religion the key factor in their murders?
Saeed Ahme writes on CNN: “Police: Dispute over parking may have been a factor in the shootings.”
The BBC reports:
The wife of the man accused of killing three Muslim students said the attack was motivated by parking, not religion. Karen Hicks said she was “shocked” by the attack but said her husband Craig, 46, had parking disputes with many neighbours, of all religions
Many other voices disagree, saying religion is the issue.
Pervez writes:
Just as I was getting my kids ready for school this morning, I heard my phone beep. I glanced down, and saw the words “Muslims Shot Dead in Chapel Hill”. I froze, and felt a familiar chill run down my back…
The attack would have happened around 10pm in the UK. When stories break at this time, the British press might have sent their latest editions to print, but they are still usually picked up by their night teams, who monitor news around the world while everyone else is asleep.
Did the British press report the murders in the USA in a timely fashion?
Only a handful of sites, such as Al-Jazeera, AP, and The Independent, were covering the story around the time I heard about the news. At the time of writing this, many still haven’t given it any coverage, and people are furious. Do the lives of Muslims not matter? they have asked. Is our blood cheap? Why do we not get the same media attention when a crime is committed against us?…
You don’t need to be a Muslim to feel the tragedy of those murdered in cold blood. You just need to be human.
Gunshots were heard at 5.11pm in a block of flats on Summerwalk Circle in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Three Muslim students shot dead execution-style ‘by neighbor who had ranted against religion’ in fight over parking at UNC Chapel Hill
And since then pretty much every news organ has reported on the three murdered students/ human beings / young people / innocents and above all Muslims:
So. About that media bias… Are the news outlets working to an agenda? Yes. Of course they are. This is why Israel always tops the news cycle on the BBC; why Premier League football is big news on Sky; why the Daily Express is obsessed with diabetes; why the Daily Star once cheered for the EDL; why the Sun can say it won a general election; why the Mirror portrays all Tories as snobs; why the Daily Mail leads with anti-BBC news and sneers at the white working class; why there are no black editors of mainstream newspapers; and on and on and on.
News organs write for their readers. Readers go for what they prefer reading. The great thing about the web is that you can find your own sources. You can salve your own prejudices. You can read things that hurt.
So. The question might be: is Sabbiyah Pervez looking for a problem that isn’t there..?
Posted: 11th, February 2015 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
