Matilda Brooks
News reports often place ideas in an audience’s head, even before knowing the accusations are true and correct. This can lead to unfair trials and false accusations. Kishan in her article How Media Manipulates Truth about Terrorism (1997) raises some strong points on the stereotyping of Islamic people, and how mainstream media places these types of ideas in the audiences heads (Kishan Thussu, 1997). Kishan explains that the western media attempts to dehumanise and demonise stereotypical looking Muslim people, this may include large beards, turbans, or any other attribute the western media has portrayed as a ’terrorist’ or ‘dangerous’ (Kishan Thussu, 1997). The mainstream western media places various images into its audiences heads, and help the distribution of information leading this audience to always accuse anyone who may resemble this image to be a terrorist or a danger to their society. This is incorrect and unethical. An example of unethical behaviour within the media is Fairfax Media distributing a false image of a teenage boy, accusing him of being a ‘terrorist’ and stabbing a police officer before being shot dead. Fairfax allegedly took this image from his Facebook page, even though the attacker was not his boy. ABC News speaks about the false accusation in their news report here: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-25/fairfax-gets-the-wrong-man/5770368?pfm=ms (Om, 2014).
The young teenage boy could not even step outside of his home after being accused as he thought the accusation would have caused the community to turn against him (Om, 2014). The ABC News report however, blocks out his and his families faces when helping the teenage boy get his message out to the audience of the media. Proving it was not him who attacked the police. By balacking out the faces of the family members and the boy, ABC News helped deescalate the situation, and helped the boy have less media coverage with his image. ABC News showed ethical standards in their news reporting, by attempting to resolve the issue in a sensitive way. The majority of media may be unethical in their use of their power, as seen with the false accusation. ABC News, however exposes an ethical way of using the media to distribute messages to their audience.
Thussu, D. K. (1997). How media manipulates truth about terrorism. Economic and Political Weekly, 32(6), 264. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/4405068?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Om, J. (2014). Fairfax gets the wrong man [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvlV8x05EZ4
Communicate the Right Way 