How influential is press coverage of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK? What responsibilities should journalists have towards refugee individuals and communities? And what kind of media can help frame a more constructive debate? At a roundtable discussion held in London on the subject a group of volunteers tackled the problem of media representation. In this first report, offering their thoughts on recent headlines and treatment of the story are:
Mr A, a refugee from Somalia, Ms B, a refugee from Bosnia, Ms M, community and outreach officer, Ms B, community development worker, Ms A, Danish volunteer and member of the Media Group
Mr A, a refugee from Somalia: There was a report in the Daily Star a couple of years back. They reported donkeys being stolen at Grange Park (in Enfield, North London) and alleged that East African communities in that area, especially Somalis, were responsible for this theft because they were eating the donkeys. This caused universal outrage. If they had only asked, we could have told them that the Islamic tradition forbids this. We did tell them. But they have never apologised. To this day they stick to their allegations. They say they are protecting their source.
Then there was another story. This time, the Sun reported that East European communities were eating ducks from the ponds, and the following day they had another headline - "Now they are eating our fish." People just believe what they see in the media so you can't influence what they believe, no matter what the truth is. You ignore it - that's it - never try to fight or argue with someone. You hear something being said about asylum and refugees and you just turn it off and stop listening. There you go.
Ms M., community and outreach worker: The far right and the newspapers have one thing in common: they never make any distinction at all between illegal immigrants, migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers and they are simply all tarred with the same brush. We are becoming a more conservative society: we have a Conservative (London) mayor and soon perhaps a Conservative Government - so will this kind of prejudice and ignorance dominate things?
The truth is - there is a negative discourse that simply attaches itself to the non-British community, and even people who have British citizenship but who weren't born here. This is terribly detrimental to community cohesion - that these distinctions aren't made. There are no distinctions made between migrants who are coming here and benefiting the community, and those who don't, or between both of these and asylum seekers who are fleeing here seeking protection. Asylum is a human rights issue, with no relation to people ‘taking all our jobs' - that generalised perception does a lot of damage.
Ms B,community development worker: Lazy, uncreative journalism is what I object to. We live in such a complicated world where our clothes come from around the world, our food from across the world, and there is this process of globalisation going on, and yet the way asylum is reported is so scripted and narrow - there are so few exceptions, when journalists really investigate a story and try and understand what really might be happening.
Did you see Rageh Omaar's four programmes - I only saw one of them. It was so depressing. It was looking at race relations in Britain today - and it's extraordinary coming from someone like him, but he'd started from the premise that Enoch Powell's prediction had come true - not the infamous rivers of blood, but what's now called ‘cultural cohesion' - and that we are not going to be able to survive like this.
He looked at some of the issues, but he didn't dig deep. He didn't explore poverty, globalisation, how we all have multiple identities. They commissioned an interesting poll, but they didn't use it in an interesting way. The question they asked about integration was, ‘Do you follow the news in your own country?' When people said yes, they immediately concluded - like Tebbit (Norman Tebbit, Conservative politician who coined the phrase the "cricket test") - that this meant you weren't ‘integrated'!
What do they think people are? Why should it be the case that if you are following the news in your ‘own country' you can't be part of Britain and follow that news too? Omaar went to visit a group of young Punjabis who have been rediscovering an interest in the dance from their parents' homeland. And again - he flagged this up as them choosing an alien ethnic identity. But they were just in jeans and trainers, and I thought - can't you think about this in a slightly more interesting, nuanced way? These cultural and generational interfaces are really quite complex. It's really hard, particularly from the quality newspapers that the investigation is so uncurious, so uncontextualised and so unimaginative. We all buy cheap clothes from all over the world, and we know that there are wars going on out there - and yet we don't ask any questions. Our media really don't want to know.
But on a personal level, equally you get surprised the other way, like when Ahmed's neighbours came to see him and were so genuinely humane. They must have said to themselves, ‘it would be good to go and see Ahmed and his family because they may be feeling nervous....' These people may not be so well-travelled or internationally well-versed - but they can understand that there is a war on that effects people and that maybe it creates refugees who flee their country. Politicians are politicians - but I think our journalists have a lot of responsibility as well.
What's missing isn't exactly news: when ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) was cut, for example, they were happy to have an angle on that from people who were going to be deprived. But still, British people know nothing about asylum seekers lives. They don't know that asylum seekers live on vouchers - £35 per week - that they don't have a right to benefits - they can't possibly know about the complex system that has been set up and how it works.
Ms B, a refugee from Bosnia: We need to encourage more people to get involved in blogging. This is a training ground for catching up with the media and the politicians - a good opportunity. Why? A simple example: The Daily Mail had an article on 3 May, headed "Asylum seekers sneaking out of the country!" Immigration officers, they complained, had caught a number of asylum seekers who, according to them, were refused asylum and wanted to escape to France and Italy because they didn't like the weather in the UK. They also didn't think much of ‘our NHS' - according to them.
Now - you can say some of the people who read the Daily Mail you probably wouldn't want to engage with. But what was most interesting was this. On the Daily Mail website, 72 people posted comments on this article and none of them were positive. Also, none of them came from refugees and migrants. This must feed the editor's outlook. He says to himself, "Oh look - 72 people - just one article - so we have to have more of this! - more bad articles about bad refugees." We never react - we have other things to do, obviously. But this is what happens: this is how things get out of hand. There is a challenge to get people writing who don't feel confident. Maybe this might be a viable little new media project - to help people have that confidence, working with native and refugee expertise to get their message and experiences out there.
Ms A, Danish volunteer, member of the Media Group: Perhaps the new media is the way to do it, using blogs and things like that. Going the straight media route is so difficult because they want the negative not the positive stories, and there are all these rules. It's still important to try and get things said out there, and to hold the media accountable when they are not being fair or making enough effort to find out the truth. But there must be other ways to get this information out, because there are so many people who don't watch Newsnight anyway! How can you get to talk to people who refuse to talk to anyone different from themselves? These are huge challenges.
