A recent study titled “Are Muslims Collectively Responsible?" by 416 Labs of 2.6 million print and digital headlines from The New York Times (NYT) newspaper shows that there is a “significant bias" against Islam and Muslims in the articles it published between 1990 and 2014.
According to report, NYT headlines reveal Islam and Muslims were “consistently associated with negative terms," at least 57 percent of the time while cancer and cocaine are drawn negatively at 34 and 47 percent respectively.
Only 8 percent of news headlines about Islam/Muslims was positive, the study shows.
Meanwhile, Christianity and Judaism were portrayed negatively in 37 and 34 percent of headlines, which means 20 or more percent less than Islam.
"When we went into it we didn't think it would be surprising if Islam was one of the most negatively portrayed topics in the NYT," co-author Usaid Siddiqui said.
"What really did surprise us was that, compared with something as inherently negative as cancer, Islam still tends to be more negative," he added.
Over 2.6 million NYT print and digital headlines from 1990 to 2014 were examined for the study and headlines were categorized as positive, negative or neutral using sentiment analysis.
