Religious terms in headlines

The Press Council has issued a guideline to newspapers and magazines amplifying its principle restricting 'gratuitous emphasis' on ethnicity, nationality and religion insofar as it affects the use of unmodified terms in headlines.

In a recently issued reporting guideline, the Australian Press Council has urged newspapers and magazines to be careful about using in their headlines terms for religious or ethnic groups that could imply that the group as a whole was responsible for the actions of a minority among that group.

(Over the years the Council has issued a number of reporting guidelines, usually as general press releases. Some information on such guidelines and a list of them appears on the website. A full text of each reporting guideline is available on the Council's website. The Council sees these guidelines as amplifications of the Statement of Principles, exemplifying particular aspects of them. So the guideline on the use of too-general religious terms in headlines is seen as an amplification of the principle which seeks that publications avoid placing gratuitous emphasis on matters such as race and religion.)

Following the consideration of matters dealt with in Adjudication No 1236, the Council noted that the use of the words "Islam", "Islamic" and "Muslim" in headlines on reports of terrorist attacks is causing problems both for the Muslim community in Australia and the Australian media. It is important for newspapers to identify as clearly as possible the sources of terror; casting the net of suspicion and accusation too widely can be harmful, the Council said.

The Council was also aware of instances beyond the Australian Muslim community, and the current concern with terrorism, where the use of overly general terms has caused concern for the Indigenous people and the Australian Jewish community, among many others.

While acknowledging that, in some cases, the linking of words with religious connotations to terrorist groups may be, in the strictest sense, accurate, the Council still thought that it was often unfair. "Terrorists may be Muslims, but Muslims are not necessarily terrorists, as some headlines have implied," it argued.

The Press Council urged publications to be aware of the sensitivities of groups about whom they are reporting. It saw headlines as a particular problem, given their need to capture the essence of a story within a limited compass, and argued that headlines require particular care.

In a September 2001 guideline on reporting race, the Council expressed its concern "about references to race, colour, ethnicity or nationality which promote negative stereotypes in the community". In it most recent guideline, the Council considered that the use of wide, too-general terms for religious or ethnic groups in headlines could contribute to the promotion of a negative stereotype of that group.

Even though it had dismissed a complaint about a headline using the term "Islamic terror", for reasons explained in Adjudication No. 1236, the Council said in the reporting guideline that the use of headlines of the style "Muslim terror" and "Islamic bomb attack" would be best avoided as they can be seen to link religious belief and its adherents to deliberate acts of terror. The Muslim community has told the Press Council that it has already experienced the cumulative effect of the frequent use of the religious terms, which has led to increased divisions in Australian society and ostracising of citizens simply because they belong to a recognisable minority.

The Council said that it appreciated that the problem extended to other religions, and to other groups whose standing may be tarnished by actions emanating from a minority of members, and therefore urged publications to be as narrow and focused as possible in their headline description of those responsible.

The Council finally noted that news reports generally do not constitute as great a problem as headlines, since more accuracy can be achieved outside the limitations of headline space. However, it argued that care was needed in all aspects of presentation.

JACK R HERMAN

see also
The Council's guidelines on reporting
Adjudication No 1236

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