A small anti-Muslim expert clique dominates US media coverage of Islam

Evidence

In the main, however, the over-all marginality, the overall intellectual incoherence (as opposed to guild consensus), the overall interpretative bankruptcy of most — though by no means all — writing on Islam can be traced to the old-boy corporation-government-university network dominating the whole enterprise. Look at the way in which the same basically anti-Muslim figures keep turning up on the MacNeil/Lehrer Report, Nightline, or Charlie Rose. And that, finally, determines the way the United States views the Islamic world. For why else could so peculiar a structure of knowledge about Islam develop and thrive, so intertwined, well established, untroubled by one failure after another? — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 330

Categorization

• SEED: A modern follow-up piece: trace the same rotating expert panel phenomenon in today’s cable news and analyze whether the roster has really changed.

Related

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• News organizations differ in how they frame Muslim religion as a public issue (similarity 0.79)
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