Professional Journalists Visit Young Muslim-Americans

By Laura Fawaz, TMO

Dearborn, MI – The Boston Globe, The New York Times, BBC News; these are all well-known sources of news in the Western World, and their top reporters all joined together to visit Unis Middle School’s journalism class. 

Their main objective was to see how the news media impacts young Muslim and Arab-Americans, as well as their journalistic future.

The students in Ms. April Kincaid’s journalism class first began by showing their visitors some of their sample work displayed on their website, www.livingtextbook.aaja.org.  These young journalists proudly explained their work; from interviews to articles, and podcasts to broadcasts, they showed their extensive knowledge of utilizing multi-media news. 

With the majority of Unis Middle School being of Arab decent, and within, the majority following the religion of Islam, they choose to question their audience of journalists on that topic.  Asking questions such as “do you think the majority of females at Unis Middle School do or do not wear the hijab?”  Close to 85% said they thought the majority did not wear it, when if fact, the answer came to be that the majorities do choose to wear hijab.  From here, the professional journalists began to ask questions to the young journalists.  Ranging from how 9/11 was explained to them, since they were only three-years-old when it happened, to if any of them actually pick up a hard copy newspaper.

Both the students and the professionals seemed to learn from one-another.  Many of the visiting reporters from the world top newspapers mentioned how impressed they were with the extent of knowledge and enthusiasm expressed by Unis’ journalism students.  “They show how much they cared about the news because it truly affects them as young Muslim-Americans,” said a reporter in their closing gathering. 

Please check out the photo gallery at www.MuslimObsever.com.

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