“Barack Hussein Obama: Campaigning While (Allegedly) Muslim”

Newswise — Despite reporters’ goal of objectivity, some broadcast accounts and articles about rumors that President Barack Obama is Muslim suggest that being an Arab or a Muslim automatically is “a sinister accusation,” according to a study by Baylor University researchers published online in the American Communication Journal.
The article — “Barack Hussein Obama: Campaigning While (Allegedly) Muslim” — was written by Dr. Mia Moody, an assistant professor of journalism and media arts at Baylor University, and Aisha Tariq of Houston, who earned a master’s degree in international journalism from Baylor in May 2010.
The two did textual analyses of three articles from key sources — Insight online magazine, The Washington Post and an article posted on Obama’s website and also published in the Los Angeles Times — and also reviewed six broadcast transcripts from Fox News and CNN.
Moody and Tariq found that members of the media have reinforced public animosity toward Arabs and Muslims, in part by fusing Arab ethnicity, Islamic faith and terrorism post-Sept. 11, 2001.
They examined news coverage between Jan. 17, 2007 (when Insight online magazine broke a story about rumors that Obama was Muslim in an article headlined “Hillary’s team has questions about Obama’s Muslim background”) through Election Day, Nov. 5, 2008.
Textual analysis often looks at culture as a narrative in which those who produce texts or “cultural artifacts” — such as a pop song, magazine article or television program — either consciously or unconsciously link themselves to larger issues in society. Media framing is the way reporters portray news, including determining what is newsworthy, what can be taken for granted and how that influences audience perception.
A crucial finding by Moody and Tariq was that all of the stories — which were intended to convey, counter or consider that rumors that Obama is a Muslim — ignored the issue of whether accusations or defenses demonstrated hostility towards Muslims and Arabs.
Some framing tactics included use of Arabic words, highlighting parts of Obama’s biography that seemed foreign and concealing information, Moody and Tariq wrote. For example, some pundits referred to Obama’s middle name “Hussein;” one article never stated that Obama is Christian but rather stressed that he attended a Church of Christ but “is not known to be a regular parishioner.”
While rumors initially spread via Internet and word of mouth, the article that “broke” the story was Insight online magazine’s report that a campaign staffer of American presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton had leaked a report to an Insight reporter. The report said that Obama had attended “a so-called Madrassa, or Muslim seminary" during his childhood in Indonesia. The article said the Clinton campaign planned to use this against him in the primary campaign.
The story then was covered by Obama’s website and in The Washington Post.
Subsequent coverage by Fox and CNN examined (1) the revelation that Obama had attended an Islamic school; (2) the removal of women wearing Islamic headscarves from a visible position behind then-Sen. Obama during a rally; and (3) the publication of The New Yorker magazine cover with a satirical cartoon of Obama dressed in traditional Muslim clothes, among them a turban.