‘In the name of Allah” ran a front-page headline of Today newspaper in the UK in April 1995. It accompanied a picture of the Oklahoma City bombing, showing a fireman holding a young girl’s body.
Muslims were held responsible – and without evidence – for the deaths of 168 people and 680 injured. But the culprit, Timothy McVeigh, was in fact an American survivalist, not a Muslim.
The headline frames our understanding of some of the key issues at stake. It is the lens through which we see the world and, by extension, where we position ourselves in it.
Writing a headline is an art – it has to be short, information-packed, but also erudite and snappy. It has to represent the article, as well as add something more. Its ideas are designed to stick.
So when headlines are deliberately aimed at creating misperceptions, or worse, stirring the cesspool of hate, we ought to be alert to the agenda.
Last month, an imam was beaten to death in Rochdale, a northern UK town, which has a large Muslim population. The Times decided to run the headline “Imam beaten to death in sex grooming town ”in reference to a scandal involving other local groups. The imam was tarnished in death, although he had nothing to do with those acts. The headline was changed online following some pressure. The same newspaper also published the headline “Quran encourages rape”, which again had to be changed to “Quran used by ISIS to justify rape”.
Last year, The Sun, another leading UK paper, ran a full front-page declaring 1 in 5 Brit Muslims sympathise with jihadists. The poll data did not show this, it hadn’t even used the term jihadist in its research.
Even if false news is easy to call out, the damage is done. But an editorial and headline stance that sets out to consistently repeat negative tropes is not just devious but dangerous.
The British parliament is likely to relocate during an upcoming renovation, and one option is to a building nearby owned by some Qataris. The by-laws governing the building prohibit the sale of alcohol, which is not that uncommon. This comes after intense public scrutiny of MP expenses, as well as austerity measures in public spending. So the headline could highlight that not selling subsidised alcohol to MPs would save the taxpayer £4 million (Dh 21m). Instead, they wrote that the parliament could be subject to Sharia.
When a national petrol station announced that it wouldn’t sell alcohol, it was against the backdrop of a public outcry, with many motorway service stations saying that they didn’t see a problem with selling alcohol to drivers. The business should have been applauded for its stance. However, as it was owned by a Muslim, the headline claimed that the decision was based on Sharia.
Since the rise of social media, the headline has become even more crucial in framing ideas. It must tell the entire story, so that viewers feel that the publications are offering some value to them. The editorial stance is distilled into a sentence, and that is how the world’s events are framed.
A publication with integrity will always select headlines that reflect the real news. The challenge for readers is to discern the good headlines, from the ones that peddle a world view designed to perpetuate misinformation and hate.
Shelina Zahra Janmohamed is the author of Love in a Headscarf and blogs at www.spirit21.co.uk
