A closer look at media coverage of the tragedy
On Feb. 10, three Muslim students were shot and killed in an apartment building near the University of North Carolina (UNC). The victims – Deah Barakat, 23, his wife, Yusor Abu-Salha, 21, and Yusor’s 19-year-old sister, Razan Abu-Salha – were often described as role models, and were active volunteers in their community.
Barakat was a dental student, with to travel to Turkey in the summer of 2015 to provide dental care to children who have become refugees due to the ongoing Syrian Civil War. Yusor had recently graduated from North Carolina State University (NCSU), with a degree in biological sciences and plans to begin dental studies in Chapel Hill this fall. Razan had just enrolled in UNC’s architecture program.
The shooter, Craig Hicks, 46, was arrested after he turned himself in, charged with first-degree murder. A quick glance at Hicks’s Facebook profile reveals extremist views regarding religious affiliation. Hicks described himself as a “gun-toting atheist,” and his neighbours said he was often angry and confrontational. Yusor had mentioned to her father that Hicks was “hateful,” and that she thought the hatefulness was because of her religion.
After the tragic shooting, media coverage left a lot to be desired. Very little news coverage was provided shortly after, and it took national news outlets up to 15 hours to publish stories regarding the shooting. When stories started to appear, they were less-than-satisfactory, sparking the trending of “#MuslimLivesMatter” on twitter.
Tweets quickly pointed out that the presented motive for the shooting was a “parking dispute” between the neighbours. Social media users also took issue with the fact that media coverage referred to Hicks as “a man” and purported that the students died, not that they were murdered. Hicks’s religious affiliations were rarely mentioned, and those on social media quickly demanded answers. Many questioned: If the shooter had been Muslim, and the victims white, how would the coverage of this story be different?
Aaron Wannamaker, a communications assistant with the Muslim Association of Canada, recently spoke with CBC News regarding the issue.
“Had it been the other way around – one Muslim gunman killing three people,” Wannamaker noted, “everyone would have been all over it.”
Mohammad Abu-Salha, the father of Yusor and Razan, does not believe his daughters were murdered because of a parking space, but rather because of growing anti-Muslim sentiments in America.
“It was execution style, a bullet in every head,” he said to the News and Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina. “This was not a dispute over a parking space this was a hate crime. This man had picked on my daughter and her husband a couple times before.”
Chapel Hill Police Chief Chris Blue responded to allegations of hate crime said in the department’s official statement.
“We understand the concerns about the possibility that this was hate-motivated,” said Blue, “and we will exhaust every lead to determine if that is the case.”
With a rising anti-Muslim rhetoric prevalent in social discourse, accuracy in reporting stories such as these is of the utmost importance. Many members of the Muslim community – and the community at large – remain disappointed in regards to how this story was handled.
A UNC professor, in a open letter released following the shooting, called on the campus student community to push for change in society rhetoric.
“Your job is to make change, like Deah and Yusor and Razan,” the professor wrote. “That’s the only way I can think […] to make sense of their murders; that’s what I encourage you to begin today, to begin the change that will make such things so much less likely to happen in the future.”