Reframing journalists’ assumptions about audience preferences enables more inclusive reporting on Muslims.

Evidence

The interviews with local journalists underscore the transformative potential inherent in reconsidering journalists’ perceptions of audience preferences and needs, which in turn can engender alternative approaches to reporting on Muslims. Such reframing positions Muslims as an inclusive component of British society rather than relegating them to the problematic status of the ‘Other’. The local journalists’ conceptions of audiences and their corresponding responsibilities to, and relationships with them reflect the feasibility of reporting on stories in ways that integrate, rather than alienate, Muslims within their chosen social imaginary. — Nadia Haq, ‘The National Media Just Sees Muslims…, 64

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the article ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ — both examine how in-group framing of a stigmatised group shifts with the writer’s imagined audience.
• SEED: Angle: ‘Your imagined reader decides who counts as a person’ — arguing that newsroom assumptions about audience, not bias alone, drive othering in coverage.