I apologize for the 'cut and paste' but, this paper delivered at the INCORE Race & Media conference
University of Ulster, 3 October 2007

'Portrayal and participation of minorities in the media'

by Mike Jempson
Director, The MediaWise Trust
Visiting Professor in Media Ethics, Lincoln University
Senior Lecturer, University of the West of England

sums up the very real menace of papers like The Express and the Mail

'Sensational stories may sell newspapers yet they have also managed to conflate issues the seeking of refuge from war and persecution, with economic migration and international terrorism. In the popular imagination Britain is now crawling with illegal immigrants falsely claiming to be persecuted minorities; and in their midst are criminal elements and people secretly conspiring to put everyone's life or way of life at risk.

Inaccurate coverage breaches the human rights of asylum-seekers and refugees, poisons public discourse, encourages xenophobia, racism and inappropriate political responses.

Yet when we went public about the errors in the 'Plot to kill Blair' story, and got the police to denounce it as 'rubbish', the Daily Express solicitors accused us of 'publicity seeking'. They also threatened another newspaper with legal action if they published details of another of our exposés of an erroneous story of a Slovakian Roma family.

There have been thousands of headlines like these – and many appeared in the Daily Express, acquired by a porn baron who discovered that its flagging sales improved when it ran anti-asylum headlines. Its own journalists – led by Michele Stanistreet, now president of the NUJ – took the paper to the PCC complaining that their copy was being skewed merely to make for such headlines. The regulator refused to take up the issue – not least because complaints have to be made by individuals directly affected by a story – and since few asylum seekers are named and fewer still complain, there is nothing they can do.'


I have seen some of these scare (some of the best known stories have turned out to be just plain wrong) headlines repeated here such as the infamous
SWAN BAKE
Asylum seekers steal the queen's birds for barbecues
ASYLUM GANG had 2 swans for roasting

a total fabrication!
but it seems only too easy to be repeated as 'gospel' here some 4/5 years later as an example of the danger and threat of a muticultural nation.