London fire coverage exposes media portrayal of Muslims, poor as ‘scroungers and terrorists’

Extensive damage is seen to the Grenfell Tower block which was destroyed in a disastrous fire, in north Kensington, West London, on June 16. (Reuters)

LONDON: As London police on Monday confirmed that around 80 people died in the Grenfell Tower fire last month, tensions remained high in the local community — with some pointing the finger at the mainstream media’s coverage of the tragedy.
A YouTube video uploaded by “Justice 4 Grenfell” coordinator Ishmahil Blagrove — an anti-mainstream-media tirade aimed at Sky News reporter Jason Farrell — has since gone viral.
“You are the ones who facilitate this,” the west Londoner lambasted. “You are the mouthpiece of this government. You are the people who make this possible. You are the ones who validate it. You are just as culpable.”
The video has since been viewed 250,000 times.
Chimene Suleyman, a New York and London-based writer and featured author in the recently-released “The Good Immigrant” book of essays, said that public anger and uprising against mainstream media is a result of decades of “media vilification of entire communities; the working class, Muslims, and people of color in general.”
She said: “I do think it’s a fair accusation; the media has demonized these communities and allowed them to live in sub-par and dangerous conditions.
“These people have been labeled as scroungers and terrorists for many decades. Now the community uprising is so loud, that it’s impossible not to hear it.”
Suleyman urged the collective mainstream media to produce “more positive and honest stories,” as well as employ more inclusive recruitment strategies.
“There’s something perverse and voyeuristic about people coming down to observe the community and writing about it when the real stories could have been written by people in the communities.”
She called for greater inclusion “to help change the national narrative where we have dehumanized communities so much that they are left in sub-par conditions.”
Sue Caro, a “Justice 4 Grenfell” campaign coordinator and a media and diversity specialist, agreed that the mainstream media in some cases has been negative, particularly with what she deemed The Telegraph’s “hatchet job” on Justice 4 Grenfell, which labeled the organization’s members “agitators.”
However, Caro added that in some cases the mainstream media had done justice to the story. “The media response to the fire has been very mixed,” she said, “and sometimes positively surprising.”
She said however that the mainstream media was to blame for helping to create today’s predicament. “The way (the media) have conducted themselves in the past … their culpability lies in the making of this situation; the community outrage stems from years of negative portrayal in the mainstream media.”
According to Abdalhamid Evans, founder and senior analyst at Muslim research firm Imarat Consultants, the public anger aimed at the mainstream media is a reflection of a wider national malaise.
Evans claims that the outrage at the mainstream media is more indicative of several decades of wider government issues. “The cracks are appearing — the government doesn’t represent the working class. But the media is the wrong target,” he said.
“What’s wrong,” he said, “is the fact the fire happened at all. The fact it could be OK — by the people who put it up and the people who allowed it. People cannot just become viewed as dispensable.”
Evans urged a long-term view: “If you look over decades … it needs another approach. Why is the country angry? You need to ask why.”
Mohammed Abbasi, co-director of the Association of British Muslims, said it is important that all stakeholders affected by and involved in the Grenfell Tower find a way to learn from the tragic incident. He said: “It shouldn’t be an attack on this group or that group. We need to focus first on helping the victims. In time, we all need to find a way to understand these issues more.”
Abbasi said that, in his opinion, readers are too quick to view non-mainstream media as the truth but he agreed that there is also a widespread mistrust of mainstream media. “There’s not much of a public desire to verify the non-mainstream media, so there needs to be a balance between both.”