Bad News for Refugees Book launch

Glasgow Media Group’s latest book, Bad News for Refugees by Greg Philo, Emma Briant and Pauline Donald, examines how migrants (especially asylum seekers) have been stigmatised in political rhetoric and media coverage, and the impact of this on wider British society. At this event, Greg Philo will speak about how it is possible to work towards both a better informed media and more humane policy.

Coverage of migration, asylum and refugees is often partial, inaccurate and hysterical – as in the tone of this example headline from the Daily Express: “UK message to migrants: you are not wanted” (6 June 2011). Governments do not simply respond to such coverage, they also promote it. Bad News for Refugees features startling comments from anonymous journalists, underlining how the overwhelming thrust of media coverage, especially in conservative press, has been negative and jumbles together migrants and asylum seekers who have the legal right to claim asylum.

A journalist from the Daily Star described to us these news values: “There is nothing better than the Muslim asylum seeker, that’s sort of jackpot I suppose: all social ills can be traced to immigrants and asylum seekers flooding into this country“. Another from a broadsheet described how young, inexperienced reporters would be pressured “to put their conscience aside and go and monster an asylum seeker”. The resulting coverage becomes part of the everyday language of our society.