A duty to inform

Time for the media to sit down and decide on how to report incidents of terror and Islamophobia.

Earlier this month, a man driving a pick-up truck slammed into and killed four members of a family of Pakistani origin in the south of Canada´s Ontario province. A 20-year-old suspect fled the scene after the attack and was arrested at a mall seven kilometers from the intersection in London, Ontario where it happened. Police say that there is evidence that this was a planned, premeditated act, motivated by hate. They believe that these victims were targeted because they were Muslim.

Identified as Nathaniel Veltman, the suspect has been charged with four counts of first degree murder and one count of attempted murder. The suspect´s social media postings were later reviewed by police, and Canadian media commented that the attack brought back painful memories of a Quebec City mosque mass shooting in January 2017 and a driving rampage in Toronto that killed 10 people in April 2018.

The incident occurred at about 8:40 pm when the five family members were walking together along a sidewalk when a black pick-up truck mounted the kerb and struck them as they waited to cross the intersection.

There seem to be a series of such incidents. Four years ago, a 27-year-old white supremacist burst into a Quebec City mosque and unleashed a hail of bullets on worshippers who were chatting after evening prayers, killing six men and seriously wounding five others.

At the time, prior to the New Zealand mosques shootings in March 2019, it was the worst ever attack on Muslims in the West. The shooter, Alexandre Bissonette, was sentenced to 40 years in prison, but that was lowered on appeal, and the Supreme Court is now reviewing his punishment.

The victims of the latest incident included a 74-year-old woman, a 46-year-old man, a 44-year-old woman and a 15-year-old girl — together representing three generations of the same family. A nine-year-old boy was also hospitalised following the attack and is recovering.

Crimes against the Muslim community seem to be rising in Canada. Days after the attack on the family, another man of Pakistani origin was stabbed, beaten and had his beard cut. According to details, the victim Kashif was stabbed in the arm and then hit over the head with the cane he used for walking, knocking him unconscious. Kashif said that the attackers were gone when he regained consciousness. One can only wonder what is triggering this recent spate of attacks against the Muslim community.

The question here is – what role does the media play in this? This time round, there was another challenge for the media. The family of the Ontario killings made an appeal not to use the pictures of the victims in their news reports. The appeal was based mainly on grounds that the pictures could be used to glorify the murders by extremist groups. For example, the attacker of the New Zealand mosques filmed his action and this video was viewed online by many. Incidents of Islamophobia that occurred later were in some instances linked to that video.

Time and again we have seen extremists using the media to glorify their actions. Possibly the appeal of the family was reasonable under the circumstances. However no major media house – both in Canada and in Pakistan – respected their wishes.

One’s mind goes back to the siege of the Lindt Café in Sydney in 2014. At the time of the siege, police said that they had had identified the gunman and he was well known to them. But at the same time news organisations reported that the suspect had contacted them to issue demands, which police have urged media not to report. And the media respected this request with the result that the identity of the terrorist remained hidden. This deprived him of the much-needed oxygen of publicity that most attackers demand. That single action of the media perhaps helped avoid a repeat of such incidents in Australia.

Maybe it is time for the media in Pakistan, and possibly in other parts of the world, to sit down and decide on how to report incidents of terror and Islamophobia. When should we identify the perpetrators and when should we respect the privacy of the victims? More importantly, who will decide this? The media should set its own rules. While we have a duty to inform, it should also be done in a manner that does not lead to more harm.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, June 28^th, 2021.

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