Reporting Asylum and Refugee Issues
John O | 02.05.2008 05:53 | Migration | Social Struggles | Workers' Movements
Is your local media newspaper/television/radio reporting immigration/migration stories in a fair and balanced manner, if not print of copies of attached pamphlet and picket your local media.
Asylum and immigration issues are complicated areas of public policy and debate. Balanced and well-informed media coverage of refugee issues gives readers impartial and considered access to sides of the story often lost or misrepresented.
In recent years,strides have been made to address ‘the danger that inaccurate,misleading or distorted reporting may generate and atmosphere of fear and hostility that is not borne out by the facts’, including the recognition that such reporting could be a breach of Clause 1 of the industry Code of Practice (Press Complaints Commission Guidance Note issued October 2003)
.Yet as the focus of the debate has switched to immigration,particularly in light of EU expansion,wide-spread confusion over what constitutes an asylum seeker or a refugee and how this differs from an economic migrant persists.
Asylum seekers and refugees,who have already by definition fled conflict and persecution, are regrettably still subject to suspicion. In re-launching this leaflet, 'Reporting Asylum and Refugee Issues ' UNHCR aims to offer journalists seeking to report on refugee issues practical assistance and guidance on how this can be achieved accurately and fairly.
Message from Bemma Donkoh, Country Representative,UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) London:
Supported by: MediaWise, NUJ, UNHCR, ICAR
In recent years,strides have been made to address ‘the danger that inaccurate,misleading or distorted reporting may generate and atmosphere of fear and hostility that is not borne out by the facts’, including the recognition that such reporting could be a breach of Clause 1 of the industry Code of Practice (Press Complaints Commission Guidance Note issued October 2003)
.Yet as the focus of the debate has switched to immigration,particularly in light of EU expansion,wide-spread confusion over what constitutes an asylum seeker or a refugee and how this differs from an economic migrant persists.
Asylum seekers and refugees,who have already by definition fled conflict and persecution, are regrettably still subject to suspicion. In re-launching this leaflet, 'Reporting Asylum and Refugee Issues ' UNHCR aims to offer journalists seeking to report on refugee issues practical assistance and guidance on how this can be achieved accurately and fairly.
Message from Bemma Donkoh, Country Representative,UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) London:
Supported by: MediaWise, NUJ, UNHCR, ICAR
John O
e-mail:
JohnO@ncadc.org.uk
Homepage:
http://www.ncadc.org.uk
Comments
Hide the following 2 comments
useful thankyou but 'definitions' reinforce half the problem
02.05.2008 09:14
whatever
Balanced information? You must be jocking!
02.05.2008 15:14
NCADC was not brilliant either, though John O had the merit to give the news of the protest to the world first, he went on holidays immdeiately after. Apparently he the only person who has the power and authority to post the NCADC news bulletin and put stuff on their website, so there was nothing there either. The entire corporate media was totally uninterested - perhaps hunger strikes are not fashionable this season - the detainee's protest was brutally repressed without much fuss or publicity, besides a few activists from No Borders and other radical groups helding a protest at Kalyx...how disgusting and depressing.
having a laugh?