Refugees and migrants have virtually no voice in the media, with 92% of UK news items not naming individuals or giving them the chance to tell their story, according to a research report from the Refugees Reporting project.
UK media made the fewest references to a refugee or migrant in asylum and migration stories across the seven European countries studied.
The project has ‘raised the importance of following existing journalistic codes of practice, building trust and capacity between refugee groups and media professionals, creating better media understanding among NGOs working with refugee groups, and, above all, giving voice to the diversity, experience, and expertise of refugees and migrants themselves.
‘We must change the narrative that still too often speaks of a “refugee crisis” in Europe. The crisis is not one of numbers or capacity. The crisis is one of political will and understanding’, the report concludes.
Refugees Reporting was a year long project of the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) and the Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe (CCME).
For more details see Focus on Refugees.
Church response to the refugee crisis
See our dedicated page for more details of how the churches are responding to the refugee crisis.
