It isn’t everyday you see academia accuse industry leaders of racism in their practices. But this is what took place last Thursday when Concordia’s associate journalism professor Ross Perigoe and The Gazette Editor-in-Chief Andrew Phillips debated Perigoe’s thesis entitled Racism after 9-11: The Gazette Newspaper and the Montreal Muslim community.
Perigoe’s paper analyzed some 362 articles published between Sept. 11 and Sept. 30, 2001 that dealt with the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre.
“A discussion about racism in the media is simply another chapter about the recognition and celebration of the charter of human rights,” Perigoe said to some 25 attendees at the Novotel hotel downtown.
During the debate, Perigoe presented a series of articles which contained remarks that he found to be racist. In one example, Perigoe accused The Gazette of linking immigration, organized crime and terrorism together.
In all, Perigoe said he found over 1,000 statements he deemed racist towards Muslims and only 22 anti-racism statements.
“When journalists say ‘This is what I am hearing,’ it naturalizes [the statements] and allows [the public] to say, ‘Well this is what people are thinking, perhaps I’ll think it as well.’ The Gazette did not comment on the inappropriateness of these remarks,” said Perigoe.
Scrutinized for racist elements were news, opinions and “coping stories” of both Muslims and non-Muslims in addition to The Gazette editorials and journalist commentaries.
Perigoe found the highest percentage per thousand words of comments he deemed racist to be in the column section of the newspaper.
“[It was] the writing that journalists were generating that contained racist comments themselves,” said Perigoe.
“Columnists have the luxury of taking two days or more to construct their articles, some would argue that they function as a lightning rod, often to argue points of view that are at odds with the mainstream,” said Perigoe. “Of the 44 columns examined, two provided anti-racist discourse.”
Phillips, who became Editor-in-Chief in 2004, rebutted Perigoe’s arguments by saying the definition of racism he used was not a valid one.
“The word ‘racism’ is very highly charged and it’s difficult to have a rational debate when individual institutions are being labelled racist or accused of indulging in so called racist discourse,” said Phillips. “We have to be particularly careful in how we use such words and what we mean.”
He added that many of the remarks were taken out of context. Some articles, Phillips argued, actually refuted the racism occurring at the time.
‘The suggestion that The Gazette engaged in racist discourse is a very weak and a grossly overstated statement,” Phillips said. “In fact I’ll go further, such an accusation is irresponsible . . . and does nothing to foster constructive dialogue on vital issues.”
Salam El-Menyawi, President of the Muslim Council of Montreal along with Adil Charkaoui, a Moroccan immigrant and victim of the controversial Security Certificates policy were present at the debate.
“It’s a good dialogue, it’s a beginning,” he said to The Concordian before leaving to meet his 10 p.m. curfew, a condition of his release.
The debate panel included Lorna Roth, former Chair of Concordia’s Communications department and Rachad Antonius, Deputy Director at l’UQAM’s Centre on Immigration, Ethnicity and Citizenship.
Antonius agreed with Phillips. He questioned the use of counting racists remarks without giving them proper context.
“If I used the same methodology that you used, and came in and counted the number of racist remarks in your power point presentation,” said Antonius to Perigoe, “I would conclude that your discourse is racist. It is not enough to just count the amount of racists remarks.”
The only point that was agreed upon was that media newsrooms and journalism schools are not multicultural enough and are not representative of Canada’s diverse demographics.
Roth warned that simply hiring visible minorities in newspapers would not necessarily produce news coverage that reflects Canada’s diversity.
“We need to have explicit training to build new associative links between immigrant communities and positive associations in the media,” said Roth.
