Islamic Journalism

To the West, journalism is the name of collecting every new happen and publishing it for public awareness. In this process the state and publisher's policies influence making fact or face of news to be brought out. Thus the integrity of eventual narration is nonintegrated.

“We’ve lost our ways…we should go to Law School instead…There’s not that many jobs in journalism anyway.”

So proclaimed keynote speaker M.L Elrick, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for the Detroit Free Press. “I am upset being a part of Western journalism.” Elrick said at the 100 Years of Michigan State University Journalism Centennial Celebration Conference, on October 23, 2010.

On the PBS Newshour of November 10th, Geneva Overholser, director of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, referred to western journalism as a “new kind of wild west atmosphere.”

Including most prominent news TV channels and newspapers owned by west, many other news agencies are biased to personal, state or regional policy.

Media Mogul Rupert Murdoch himself and his all TV channels, Especially Fox News Channel have been accused by many critics, the most biased to political right and the Republican Party.

The rigidity of the Western journalism forces reporters to make false choices, to call a thing black or white when it was really gray. The published article “Making of an Afghan News Agency” written by Kathleen Flynn at Pulitzer center website, underscored the falsification and fabrication of West journalism when covering other countries for storytelling and piece of news.

To Islam, Journalism is called ‘Sahaafat’. Sahaafat is derived from the Arabic language word ‘Sahaf’ or ‘Saheefa’. Therefore, a Saheefa, in English language is called divine set of God instructions or message. To Islam, Sahaafat is honored as next divine responsibility to a Sahaafi (journalist).

Since a journalist's foremost concern is the dissemination of news, we have to agree upon a...