Abstract
Media representations of Muslims in Britain have often disappointed both faith practitioners and scholars. Imputed failings include distorting beliefs or practices, essentialising the faith, and amplifying voices that are not representative of Islam. This last factor hinges on questions of authority: what journalists and Muslims recognise as authority can differ in important ways. Drawing on studies of journalism practice, prior professional experience, and ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative interviews in Scotland, I discuss the conventional preference among journalists for “official sources” and the problems this can present in terms of hierarchy in Islam. I contrast this with a less-studied imperative, also present in newsrooms, for “real people”. This category matches well with Islam’s decentralised tradition and presents an opportunity to understand how different kinds of sources are presented in media coverage. It is possible for journalists to ensure that these differing claims to authority are represented properly, though this requires knowledge and responsibility.
Highlights
Authority is characterised in part by its audience; authority is relational
Krämer and Sabine Schmidtke examine authority in their edited volume Speaking for Islam (Krämer and Schmidtke 2006), and they open with a pair of questions that indicate a shift in audience relevant for this article: Who speaks for Islam? Who explains to Muslims whether human rights are a legitimate concept ‘in Islam,’ whether there is such a thing as ‘Islamic values’ and what they consist of, and whether violence can ever be justified from a religious point of view?
I argue that the bespoke demands of authority in journalism make the presentation of Islamic authority a challenge, but that journalists have the capacity to frame Islam’s authority structures within their reporting by making it clear in their stories the ways in which a given source might be authorised
Summary
Authority is characterised in part by its audience; authority is relational. I argue that the bespoke demands of authority in journalism make the presentation of Islamic authority a challenge, but that journalists have the capacity to frame Islam’s authority structures within their reporting by making it clear in their stories the ways in which a given source might be authorised. Though this does not account for deliberate, ideological misrepresentations of. It provides some tools for improvements within the broader discussion of religious literacy and responsible journalism (Petley and Richardson 2011)
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