ethics
02-14-2004, 07:15 PM
Oliver Burkeman reports from London, where the tabloids are stuffed with anti-immigrant rhetoric (http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=2kLMMRjCD7S4bnxoYB8OaG%3D%3D), including rumors that migrants from Eastern Europe kill and barbecue the swans in the city's parks. All this yellow journalism has contributed to the rise of the far-right British National Party and the false perception that asylum seekers are on-the-dole fakers.
Predictably, anti-refugee voices in the media reject responsibility for the incendiary atmosphere. Newspapers reflect the public mood rather than create it, say journalists at the Daily Mail, a middlebrow tabloid that has helped lead the campaign with headlines like "a door we can't close." But it isn't hard to impute a causal connection--one rendered all the more distasteful given the Mail's history on the topic. In 1938, alongside loud hurrahs for Britain's fascist leader Oswald Mosley, the newspaper opined, "The way stateless Jews from Germany are pouring in from every port in the country is becoming an outrage." In many tabloids, there is a "relentless repetition of hostile epithets and a hugely disproportionate number of photos of asylum-seekers looking threatening," says Kirsteen Tait, director of a unit at King's College London that monitors asylum coverage. "In our studies, people say they don't believe the worst type of inaccurate and imbalanced reporting. But their later comments show they've been influenced." Worse, in the last few weeks, a new scare has taken hold. With ten more states joining the European Union in May, some newspapers claim that 100,000 Gypsies from new EU members Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia could soon arrive in Britain seeking benefits and health care.
Predictably, anti-refugee voices in the media reject responsibility for the incendiary atmosphere. Newspapers reflect the public mood rather than create it, say journalists at the Daily Mail, a middlebrow tabloid that has helped lead the campaign with headlines like "a door we can't close." But it isn't hard to impute a causal connection--one rendered all the more distasteful given the Mail's history on the topic. In 1938, alongside loud hurrahs for Britain's fascist leader Oswald Mosley, the newspaper opined, "The way stateless Jews from Germany are pouring in from every port in the country is becoming an outrage." In many tabloids, there is a "relentless repetition of hostile epithets and a hugely disproportionate number of photos of asylum-seekers looking threatening," says Kirsteen Tait, director of a unit at King's College London that monitors asylum coverage. "In our studies, people say they don't believe the worst type of inaccurate and imbalanced reporting. But their later comments show they've been influenced." Worse, in the last few weeks, a new scare has taken hold. With ten more states joining the European Union in May, some newspapers claim that 100,000 Gypsies from new EU members Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia could soon arrive in Britain seeking benefits and health care.