War of words: migration in the media

War of words: migration in the media

War of words: migration in the media

Immigration has been presented by politicians as out of control and a threat to the British way of life. This relentless effort to establish immigration as a totally negative phenomenon has not just been left unchallenged by most national newspapers and much of the rest of the media, but has been magnified, sensationalised and delivered to viewers, listeners and readers across the country - as was seen in the referendum coverage. 

This constant barrage of negativity has been pounding the public consciousness for years. A new analysis by the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford of the 2006-2015 period has spelt out how the coverage reinforces prejudice.

For example, it found that when British newspapers have not simply used the word ‘immigration’ by itself, but have described immigration in some additional way, about 15 per cent of the time they explicitly use the word ‘mass’. Another widely used prefix is ‘illegal’. Words have two meanings – a dictionary definition and an emotional resonance – and ‘mass’ and ‘illegal’ are ill-defined and suggest enormous numbers and crime.

When the researchers looked at the most frequent actions associated with both terms they found a category of verbs expressing efforts to limit or control movement—what the report calls ‘limit verbs’. 

This finding seems arcane, but reveals a great deal. 

The word ‘immigration’ is neutral: the words ‘mass immigration’ or ‘illegal immigration’, or words encouraging ‘controls’ or ‘limits’ are not neutral. They are loaded terms: they are negative, they suggest the need for curbs. ‘Mass’ and ‘illegal’ are ill-defined and suggest enormous numbers and crime. Repeat these and similar words, tens, scores, hundreds, thousands of times and you create an atmosphere of negativity, in which the very idea of migration and migrants becomes automatically associated with something bad. 

It gets worse. The report says that many of the stories surveyed are not just reports of, say, a politician’s speech, but are “opinion pieces” by journalists that carry the views of other sources. In other words, journalists and pundits play an important role in “framing” media discussions of migration. This is particularly dangerous, because the role of many pundits given space in the media is not to clarify or inform but to provoke – so they are encouraged to be as opinionated, trenchant and biased as possible. The aim is not to inform but to entertain and provoke.

And when sources are quoted, they tend to be politicians or civil servants. They are officials, promoting an official view – which for several years has been concerned with cutting immigration, with demonising the concept of free movement of people, with publicly and repeatedly hammering the message that immigration is bad.

Where in all this are the positive arguments for immigration, the welcoming words for migrants, the highlighting of achievements and benefits?

Where, too, are the voices of migrants? The report itself does not investigate this issue, but our own research has shown that 12 per cent of reports do not include migrants’ views. This is ridiculous. Who would write about women without quoting a woman? It is also bad journalism. Journalists and their organisations and publications, such as the UK Press Gazette, and journalism schools, must take this matter on board and start to redress it.