Document details

Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World

New York: Vintage Books, Random House, 2nd ed. (1997), lxx, 200 pp.

Contains index

Other editions: 1st ed. 1981

Signature commbox: 10:REL-Said

"This is far more than an analysis of the way the U.S. covers the Islamic world. A penetrating study by a scholar and a humanist it goes much deeper than an examination of what he considers a biased treatment of Islamic news by the American press. Using illustrations from the media, he makes the point that we do not - perhaps are not properly trying to - understand "the new horizons being opened up everywhere in the nonwhite, non-European world" which have roots in history and involve deep cultural differences. The first third of the book deals with "Islam as News," the middle section with "The Iran Story," and the final section with "Knowledge and Power." He contends, "Knowledge and coverage of the Islamic world are defined in the United States by geopolitics and economic interests on - for the individual - an impossibly massive scale, aided and abetted by a structure of knowledge production that is almost as vast and unmanageable." But until we somehow overcome these difficulties and acquire a knowledge in depth the American press cannot cover Islam properly." (Eleanor Blum, Frances G. Wilhoit: Mass media bibliography. 3rd ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990 Nr. 376)