Bias in U.S. Domestic Terror Reporting

In the United States domestic terrorist attacks by Muslim perpetrators get on average 357 percent more news coverage than incidents with non-Muslim attackers. Major, national news sources are more likely to overreport acts of terror committed by a Muslim perpetrator than non-major, local news sources.

Researchers at the University of Alabama and Georgia State University affiliated with the Global Studies Institute studied how a perpetrator’s religion is the largest predictor of U.S. news coverage. Despite the disproportionate reportage, right wing terrorists commit twice as many acts of violence as Muslim terrorists on U.S. soil. The study links Americans’ outsized fear of Muslim terrorists along with their ignorance of threats by other groups to this asymmetric news coverage.