Hugh Muir calls for responsible reporting of Muslim community

The media needs to be more responsible and sensitive in how it reports on the Muslim community, said Guardian diary editor Hugh Muir at a public meeting yesterday.

Muir, who was co-author of the 2004 report Islamophbia: Issues, challenges and Action, said: "I'd like to know why three men put rucksacks on and blow up the tube tracks and a bus. I'd like to know why people want to travel to Pakistan and go to one of those training camps.

"But I'd like to see that dealt with in a responsible way, in a way that says here are people who are a part of our community and if they are doing these things, why are they doing them?

"What I don't want to see is them being used as typical, if they are not, and being used to demonize a whole community."

Muir was speaking at an event in London organised to address the rise of racism and Islamophobia in the media. The panel also included Independent columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Times reporter Steve Bird.

Alibhai-Brown echoed Muir's comments, agreeing that all communities should be subject to media scrutiny and that reporting must be done in a reputable manner.

"We as journalists have a responsibility to highlight all the bad things that go on", she said. "But there is a difference between caring and understanding journalism and something that is just to incite the loathing of people who often are voiceless."

Bird, who last week revealed the criminal convictions of Tommy Robinson, the head of the English Defence League (EDL), said that journalists have a duty to write the best story they can while maintaining balance and a sense of responsibility.

"As a reporter my job is not to make political statements or try to have a slant, my job is to be impartial", he said.

Muir also spoke out against the use of stereotyping in media reporting, labelling it unnecessary and called for newspapers to become more representative of society.

"If you just strip away the nonsense and just look at where we are this is really interesting. We have lots of different communities trying to get along, trying to work out what their place is in British society. Different communities are at different stages of that process and that whole process is really interesting.

"What we need is more people who can reflect that process, rather than stereotyping it and giving us a widely distorted view of it."

The meeting, which was organised as a response to the recent EDL rally in Kensington and events in France, Holland and America, comes as protestors prepare to take to Malet Street, London this Saturday to campaign against the rise of racism in the first national demonstration against racism for many years – which has been organised by Unite against Fascism and music campaign group Love Music Hate Racism.

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