How negative reporting on asylum seekers made Morgan's life a misery

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2012/nov/01/refugees-national-newspapers

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The story of Morgan Odhiambo, a refugee who chose Britain as a place of sanctuary, is sadly typical.

In his native Kenya he suffered from corruption and brutality. After his car was stolen he suspected that police, after recovering it, made money by selling it on.

When he challenged them about their fraudulent practices he was beaten and received threats that scared him enough to flee.

Like many people who live in countries once colonised by the British, and who become victims of corrupt political systems where the rule of law does not pertain, he decided to come to Britain.

He arrived here in 2003 and immediately ran into rampant prejudice against people collectively known as "asylum seekers."

Despite the fact that many British people were kind and welcoming, he ran up against plenty of scorn. Why? Gradually, he became convinced that it was due to negative press coverage. He says:

"People get their view from the newspapers. People look at you like you're a scrounger. They think you're just 'one of them'. They think you're just here to take their money or their job. They just don't know the truth."

Depressed by the hostility, he was also frustrated during a long battle to win asylum. A major turning point came in 2009 when he contacted the Red Cross and with its help, he finally became a British citizen in 2011.

Now Morgan, a 40-year-old computing student who is married with five children, is living happily near Milton Keynes. But he wishes his experience on arriving in Britain had been different and believe better, more sympathetic reporting by newspapers about the reality of life as a refugee, would have helped.

"The answer is to educate people so they know most asylum seekers are genuine and not really bad," he says.

Call for action by the Red Cross

Morgan's story is one of many that the Red Cross has heard during its years of helping asylum seekers and refugees, convincing the charity that fresh media guidance is necessary.

It is "gravely concerned" about negative reporting on asylum seekers that ignores guidance circulated to editors by the Press Complaints Commission in October 2003, which addressed inaccurate reporting about all refugees.

The Red Cross cites an independent survey - carried out by YouGov* - which shows that 72% of the UK public believe newspaper reporting about asylum seekers and refugees is negative. The survey also found that the words people most associate with media coverage of refugees and asylum seekers are "illegal immigrants" (65%) and "scroungers" (28%).

Now the charity is calling for fairer, and more accurate, press treatment of people who seek sanctuary in Britain.

To that end, it has issued a set of demands for the new press regulator to take on board:

Stop irrelevant references to immigration status appearing in negative stories about individuals;

Give the Red Cross and others the chance to speak up in defence of refugees and asylum seekers;

Monitor standards of reporting pro-actively instead of waiting for individual complaints;

Crack down on inaccurate uses of terms such as "bogus" and "illegal" when mentioning asylum seekers.

I thought we had sorted out that last problem ages ago, but here's a Times headline published in June last year, DNA test for bogus refugees scrapped as expensive flop. So the mistake appears to be creeping back. *The YouGov survey had a sample size of 2,573 British adults and was conducted from 2–4 October 2012

Source: Red Cross See also this Guardian article by Adrian Thomas, head of external relations at the Red Cross