REFUGEE REPORTING

How important is reporting on refugee issues?

 

One of the really important issues is that refugee questions get caught up generally with migration questions in the media narrative.  The migration issue is controversial largely because it’s an issue which raises popular concerns and anxieties among home communities, not least because people worry about their jobs, their future, their economic conditions, their cultural interests and so on.  And these anxieties which are very often misplaced, are exploited by unscrupulous politicians and special interests groups which often create hostility between different communities, and you see that in many parts of the world. 

You see it in Europe at the moment where you see the rise of an extremist political minority in many countries whose sole purpose is to generate hatred between migrants and non-migrant communities and the home communities. So we have the gross racism, we see incitement to violence and we see sensationalism in media coverage which is very irresponsible.

In times of social tension and economic decline, the media have a real responsibility to keep the lid on passions and prejudice and bias that sometimes emerges between refugees and migrants and home communities.  So there is, it seems to me, in this particular period, an even greater responsibility on media to be ethical and to avoid sensationalism and to avoid stereotypes and to report responsibly. 

 

What pitfalls do journalists face covering these issues?

 

One is the problem facing the individual journalist trying to get to the story.  In order to report a refugee story responsibly, a journalist needs to do proper research, they need to take their time, they need to understand the context for a refugee problem, but actually these days journalists don’t have much time.  They are under tremendous pressure to get the story out quickly and that can do real damage to the story itself.  So very often, journalists are reporting on refugee issues without proper context, without proper informed background of the situation…and this works against good, informed journalism.  

There are exceptions (Here Aidan mentions a story he recently wrote about coverage of migrant issues in Italy).

This looks like an example of alternative journalism, when in fact this should be the mainstream. 

It shows how important it is for editors and journalists to take their time and to absolutely oppose the simplistic, politically biased narrative which so often works against telling the truth about what is happening in refugee issues. 

These pitfalls are the pressure on the job, the lack of time to do proper research, the undue influence of unscrupulous politicians and interest groups and the tendency towards sensationalism – all of them encourage individual journalists to adopt stereotypical approaches to covering a story in their writing.

 

How can journalists “get it right”?

 

Absolutely paramount in any coverage of refugee issues of refugee issues is to ensure that the minority voices are heard, and we can best do that by actually talking to people caught up in the centre of the very process.  Finding out what their story is, and giving it voice.

Then I think it is important for journalists to use sources of information and organisations which speak for refugees who have got expertise and avoid going to the usual suspects in their coverage.  The best way to do that is to go out and spend some time with the people in these communities.

The mainstream media in general offer very superficial and simplistic coverage of refugee issues.  They tend not to make a distinction between refugees, people who are displaced from, for example, the war in Syria, and people who are economic migrants – people travelling from one region of the world to another to improve their economic and social status.

That really needs to be made distinct.

Get good sources of information, talk to authentic voices and representative people who can give you the background to the story, and be very careful about reporting without question the outrageous statements which will quite often be made - just because someone says something outrageous does not make it news.

There are plenty of resources online – how to deal with discrimination, racism and how to cover these stories is very important, as well as how to deal with hate speech.  My organisation, the EJN has actually been putting together some information on how to deal with hate speech.

So any journalist who is seriously interested in this can find plenty of resources online to help them develop their skills and their capacity to deal with these problems.

 

Distorted coverage

 

Next year, my organisation is going to carry out a global survey on how media cover all aspects of migration.  We believe that how the media tell the story of migration is distorted in almost every part of the world; that migrants have become the victims not only of unscrupulous of politicians looking for scapegoats for the political ills of the country, but they have also  victims of become complacent and sensationalist media who unfortunately use prejudice and bias in order to generate sensationalism in their coverage.  

This may give them short term benefits in terms of circulation or clicks online, but which can do terrible damage.  We see this as very important and we will be following this up in the coming year, and we plan to organise an international conference in 2016 to really look at how media are covering migration and how it needs to be improved.

 

Journalists in exile

 

Journalists in exile themselves need to seek to make good contacts with the local journalistic community, to make sure that they become visible.  They can do this by teaming up with local journalists’ organisations and integrating themselves in the community of journalists and their activities.  Most journalists unions see the importance of diversity in journalism and will welcome them.  What they shouldn’t do is isolate themselves so they are not seen as part of the journalistic community.

For journalists in exile, I would strongly advise that they integrate themselves as much as possible, not only to give a voice to their community but also to contribute towards the quality and diversity of the national media community.

 

Diversity of coverage

 

Journalists need to not see the whole questions of migration as just one homogenous mass, but recognise that in the complexities of the modern world, that there are all sorts of reasons why people are moving.

You have to differentiate between different groups and where they come from, and media coverage needs to be diverse in its capacity to represent that.

These are really different communities with different fears and anxieties, and they need to be treated with respect. Therefore media coverage needs to reflect the whole diversity of the migrant community and give much more detailed background about the facts. 

 

Point of view journalism

 

It seems to be that the notion of objective journalism is in retreat.  I think the traditional liberal theories of journalism are being seriously questioned by the changes in the way people communicate, and the creation of a much more open journalistic landscape.  So we have much more point-of-view journalism rather than objective journalism, and I don’t think that is necessarily a problem as long as it does not lead to selective handling of the facts or deceptive handling of the truth.

I think the biggest challenge is the threat to political and commercial interests which are seeking not to support a legitimate point of view strategy or advocate a particular trend, but are seeking to deliberately distort journalism to form propaganda for one particular opinion or another – that is really dangerous.