Sunday, January 3, 2010

Media bias, or WTF?

OK, I'm sorry, this may be offensive to some, but I've just got to say this. It's more of a question, really, I'm not really saying anything either way. But I'd love to hear some other thoughts on this. It's just kind of stumping me right now. So my question is, is this the media pushing some agenda, or is it just a reflection of reality and these are the cases they have to report?

Kurt Westergaard - a modern-day hero - is attacked by a guy with an axe. Perp is a Muslim. OK, goes without saying in this case. (But can anyone imagine a Christian, here in Scandinavia I mean, doing anything remotely like this in a similar situation?)

The little girl who was kidnapped by her father in Malmö. The father is a Muslim.

The 18-year-old who was attacked and killed in whatever that town's called ... OK, unknown perp at the moment, except that they do have a guy in custody, they just haven't released any info on him yet ... but the victim and her family are Muslims. And there are a lot of Muslims in the Gothenburg area, so, well. You know what I'm thinking.

The three girls who had their throats slit by their own father on New Year's Eve. The father is a Muslim.

The family at Tøyen where the mother died before the ambulance guys could get to her because they were afraid to go in, so they waited for the police who then got into a fistfight, apparently, with some of the family members. Muslim family.

And then there's the shitheads who were released from Gitmo and went straight to Yemen to set up training camp for more terrorists. Gah.

Please note: All of these things - except the last - are terrible tragedies and I'm not trying to make light of them in any way.

When I say 'Muslim' in the above, I'm obviously talking people whose religious affiliations I don't know (except in the Westergaard case) so what I mean is 'cultural Muslim' ... to the extent that such a thing exists.

Now, a lot of Muslims will say that we can't judge the many by the actions of a few, which of course is true. Then they'll say that these cases aren't representative, but just freak aberrations and not at all reflective of normal Muslims. But my question is ... I guess, how many times does something have to happen before it becomes representative?

I mean, I already talked about the Westergaard case, but what about that family who fought with the police? How fucked up is that? I have never in my life heard about anything like that happening with ethnic Norwegians. And don't say that it's because the police are racists - sure, they may be, but you know what, they have their reasons.

Are crazy things like these happening with all kinds of people, and the media are just cherrypicking the stories that are most unflattering to our, ahem, 'new countrymen', or WTF? o_O

5 comments:

Paz said...

Agree with you on news media, if a criminal is from a minority its pointed out and mentioned at least twice in the newscast. Mame the world over

Leisha Camden said...

That's actually not true. In Sweden there is a tacit agreement between the mainstream media that they will not mention the ethnicity of the perpetrator. It's not always kept to, but often. It's really weird. Supposedly it's to avoid increasing racism. But what is it that makes people negative towards anything, is it what actually happens or just hearing it talked about ... ? If that makes sense.

It's really weird though, in this country you're always hearing right wingers yakking about how the media is pushing this left wing liberal agenda and always sugar coating everything to do with multiculturalism and immigration ... but on the other hand what you actually see them do is push stories like these. So I wonder where the right wingers are getting their angle from, sometimes. o_O

Leisha Camden said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Paz said...

here they also highlight where the criminal is from, highlighting their socioeconomic background, that also enforces stereotypes

Anonymous said...

But an opposite example: most family tragedies here in Norway is due to the father of the family killing first the others and them himself... And that's basically always white "Christians". Still, it's not explicitly told in media what culture the man belongs to, and it's not typical for white men either.

All groups in society have some "typical ways" in extreme cases, but we can't assume the extreme cases are representative to most normal people leading their everyday life. I think we should distinct between those two.