LONDON: Meta Platforms’ Instagram failed to remove abusive comments aimed at female politicians who are potential candidates for the 2024 US elections, according to a report by the non-profit Center for Countering Digital Hate on Wednesday.
The report analyzed over half a million comments on Instagram posts by five Democratic and five Republican women politicians, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris, Senator Marsha Blackburn and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.
CCDH flagged over 20,000 comments as “toxic,” with 1,000 of these comments containing sexist and racist abuse, as well as death and rape threats. Instagram left up 93 percent of the harmful comments even after breaching the platform’s standards.
In response to the report, Meta said it has tools in place for users to control comments on their posts, including filtering out offensive comments, phrases or emojis.
“We will review the CCDH report and take action on any content that violates our policies,” said Cindy Southworth, head of women’s safety at Meta.
In its analysis of the 2020 US election, the CCDH report found that women of color were more likely to be targets of sexist and racist abuse.
The rise of online abuse against women politicians has drawn criticism from advocacy groups.
It also highlighted how social media algorithms that prioritize emotional content and engagement can inadvertently amplify this abuse, a feature that politicians often leverage to boost their engagement rates.
This underscores the role social media platforms and their algorithms play in the propagation of online abuse, a problem that extends beyond the political sphere and affects millions of users worldwide.
The report urged social media platforms to enforce their safety guidelines more effectively and take decisive action against targeted online abuse.
Meta’s Instagram failed to curtail hate speech against women politicians, report says
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Meta’s Instagram failed to curtail hate speech against women politicians, report says
- Center for Countering Digital Hate said Instagram left up 93 percent of the harmful comments directed at US women politicians
Study finds nearly half of UK news stories on Muslims show signs of bias
- Centre for Media Monitoring finds 20,000 out of 40,913 articles from 30 major news outlets contain bias and 70% link Muslims to negative behaviors or themes
- Findings reveal ‘deeply concerning evidence of structural bias’ in portrayal of Muslims by UK press and point to ‘systemic problem’ within the media, says center’s director
LONDON: Nearly half of news articles published in the UK in 2025 that referenced Muslims or Islam contained some degree of bias, according to a report issued on Monday by the Centre for Media Monitoring. It also found that about 70 percent of stories linked Muslims to negative behaviors or themes.
The nonprofit organization, which tracks the ways in which Muslims and Islam are portrayed in the media, examined 40,913 articles from 30 major news outlets and found that about 20,000 showed some form of bias.
The study looked at “structural patterns” in coverage that “shape public narratives” about Muslims amid rising hostility toward the community.
“As the largest study of its kind ever conducted in the UK, this report presents deeply concerning evidence of structural bias in how Muslims are portrayed in the UK press,” said Rizwana Hamid, the director of the organization.
It found that 70 percent of the articles it reviewed highlighted negative aspects related to Muslims, though not all of the stories were biased in themselves. The wider patterns were also troubling: 44 percent of the coverage omitted key context, 17 percent relied on generalizations, and 13 percent included outright misrepresentation.
Taken together, the monitoring center said, the findings amounted to evidence of an “information integrity crisis” that distorts public understanding, and “a deeply concerning trend” in reporting on Muslims.
The research points to a “systemic problem within our media ecosystem,” Hamid said.
“When entire communities are repeatedly framed through lenses of suspicion or threat, it inevitably shapes public attitudes, political debate and the everyday lives of British Muslims,” she added.
News brands targeting right-wing audiences were more likely to produce biased coverage, the report found.
The Spectator magazine and GB News were identified as having the highest proportion of “very biased” articles, and as the “worst across all five bias categories”: negative framing, generalizations, misrepresentation, lack of context, and problematic headlines.
Other outlets highlighted for displaying high levels of biased content about Muslims included The Telegraph, The Jewish Chronicle, Daily Express, The Sun, Daily Mail and The Times.
In contrast, the BBC, other broadcasters and left-leaning outlets recorded the lowest rates of bias in the study.
The research comes as British Muslims report rising levels of discrimination. Official figures published in October revealed that religious hate crimes against Muslims rose by 19 percent in the year to March 2025 compared with the previous 12 months.
