EUROPE: Media Complicit in Rise of Xenophobia
As European leaders increasingly question the concept of Europe without borders and follow each other in announcing the end of multiculturalism, the media response has been mostly to present migrants as destabilising Europe’s labour markets and welfare states.
The role of the media in the worsening image of migrants in Europe was debated in Budapest at a conference titled “Promoting Migrant Integration through Media and Intercultural Dialogue”.
The conference, organised by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and the Hungarian Presidency of the European Union, ran from May 16-18, and was aimed at helping media representatives provide fair and balanced coverage of migration issues.
With far-right, anti-immigration parties gaining strength throghout Europe, journalists have been signalled as frequent accomplices to rising xenophobia:
“European public opinion is being pressed with the threat of a migration wave. Both politicians and journalists should recognise their mistakes,” Czech sociologist Ivan Gabal told participants.
More at the link above.
However, I am sitting here giving these folks the side eye because, really, they needed a trade conference to come to that conclusion? Even a run of the mill media analyst like myself noticed this a good ten years ago (right when they started beating the Islamophobe drum after 9/11). It’s not like they discovered some ground breaking media truth here, is it?
Also, another media non-truth from the article:
Yet some questioned why journalists would even begin by approaching officials and not give voice to those who remain mostly voiceless: “Migrants and their organisations should speak for migrants, not government officials,” White said.
What? And end a centuries long European tradition of speaking about migrants and not to them? We should have a “European Colonial Journalist Dodo” meme to say it better with an animal GIF. Because it is more likely for a dodo to come back from extinction than for European media to stop thinking that they are still the news outlet of an 18th century empire.
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