The coverage of islam in France

How to cover islam? This assignment is one of the most controversial for journalists in Western countries. While many Muslims denounce a pattern of bias, sensationalism and insensitivity, others, mostly on the right, think the media are too protective and too politically correct.
A French political scientist Thomas Deltombe has just published a book on 30 years of the media coverage of Islam in France (L’islam imaginaire: la construction médiatique de l’islamophobie en France 1975-2005, Editions La Découverte, 392 p.). His conclusions leave a bitter taste. French television, he writes, has constructed a “fantasized vision of islam”, on the basis of dramatized events, from the 1979 Iranian revolution to the headscarf controversy to the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington. “Suspicion is generalized”, he writes.
66% of French Muslims, according to a survey in Le Monde des religions, are convinced there is hostility towards them. They of course resent the negative coverage of their faith and community. But they also criticize the so-called “positive coverage”: they believe that this form of well-intentioned journalism often leads to anecdotical and outlandish articles and subliminally presume that if these “good Muslims have made it”, in fact a minority of them, the great majority have no excuse for exclusion or failure.
This book has been met with some criticism in journalistic circles but it provides an interesting contribution to the discussion of an important issue.