Tabloids & Asylum Seekers (2003)
[Note: the masses in a western democracy are starved for authentic info &
brainwashed by the amoral & rightwing tabloids (millionaire owned, capitalist &
rightwing) and TV.
‘The people are reared to live in an altered reality – like broiler chickens or
pigs in a pen.’
(ARoy, 1Sept03)
They have no ready access to alternative sources of info. Socialist papers cannot afford to become mass dailies for lack of advertising.] Here are some snippets
S Worker, 30Aug 03
‘Asylum seekers eat our donkeys’ [D Star, 21Aug03]
This was the frontpage headline on the Daily Star. It comes hot on the heals pf the Sun’s ‘Swan bake’ story (see below). 9 donkeys were stolen from Greenwich Park, SE London and an unnamed ‘police insider’ said: ‘We are totally baffled over what happened to the donkeys. They may have been taken by immigrants who like donkey meat.’ But a named police inspector made no mention of AS. But that did not stop the D Star (which thrives on photos of nudes & is owned by the owner of D Express, Richard Desmond) from speculating that the donkeys have been spotted with Albanian immigrants giving rides on Kent beaches.
S Worker, 12 July 03
Sun headline (4 July 03): Asylum seekers steal the Queen’s birds for barbecues
The frontpage headline appeared under the title ‘SWAN BAKE’ and a picture of a swan.
The ‘exclusive’ article claimed: ‘Callous asylum seekers are barbecuing the Queen’s swans, the Sun can reveal. East European poachers lure the protected royal birds into baited traps, am official Met Police report says.’ Its reporter went on: ‘Police swooped on a group of East Europeans and caught them red handed about to cook a pair of royal swans in a park in Beckton, East London… hundreds of the graceful creatures have been killed.’ A ‘police source’ was quoted as saying: ‘It’s tragic that people from abroad don’t respect our traditions.’
In just 24 hours, the Sun ‘exclusive’ was exposed as lies. There was no police swoop and no Met police report. The police said: ‘The decline in the swan population is attributed to East Europeans. We stress we have no evidence of this.’
[S Worker, 23 Aug 03]Lies against asylum seekers
On 18 Aug 03, the Sun sunk to a new low with another sickening campaign against refugees. The front page had a huge headline ‘HALT THE ASYLUM TIDE NOW’, calling asylum ‘Britain’s biggest crisis’. ‘Britain is the No 1 destination for asylum seekers… Over a million people pour into Britain every 5 years. A record110, 700 claimed asylum in Britain last year.’ To drive its point, the Sun ran a loaded poll to claim that over 80% of the pop agreed with its witch hunt. The truth is Britain holds just 2% of the world’s refugees and ranks 9th among 15 European countries in the number of asylum applications received. And last year, this number fell last year.
‘Britain is being hit by a record number of new cases of HIV with hundreds of immigrants carrying the virus.’ But a study of refugees in Dover found in its first 6 months there were ‘no actual serious illnesses detected among asylum claimants – non TB, no AIDS/HIV’.
A vicious editorial said: ‘The flood of shirkers, scroungers and criminals – with their drugs, guns and vice – has to be stopped. Foreigners flocking to Britain are defrauding the NHS of £2bn a year.’
The fact is the NHS would cease to function without overseas nurses. The Royal College of Nursing reported in February 2003 that a quarter of all nurses working in the NHS (42,000) come from overseas.
Paul Foot said in 1976: 'Race hate and race violence does not rise and fall according to the numbers of immigrants coming to Britain. It rises and falls to the extent to which people's prejudices are inflamed and made respectable by politicians and newspapers.' But the recently published Home Affairs Committee Report on 'Asylum Removals' didn’t agree.
In its widely quoted opening paragraph, it stated that 'if allowed to continue unchecked, [the large numbers coming] could overwhelm the capacity of the receiving countries to cope, leading inevitably to social unrest'. In essence, this is Enoch Powell's 'rivers of blood' speech, couched in more moderate language. The right-wing newspapers pounced on the report's prediction, taking it as official endorsement for their longstanding campaign against immigration. The rest of the report - which among other things, asked that asylum seekers be treated as 'fellow human beings' - was largely ignored.
The tabloids Sun, Mail, Express and their sister papers on Sundays have waged a deliberate and systematic campaign of hate which no amount of liberal pleading will moderate. At a recent NUJ conference, a black journalist, who had previously worked at the Daily Mail, spoke of the culture of racism in the Mail's office, which included, he alleges, shouting 'wogs' at the TV screen when black athletes appeared. 'The Daily Mail is a culture that seeps with deep racism, and it's not just at the Mail but throughout the tabloid press', he told delegates. In many other kinds of organisation - both public and private - this kind of institutional racism has been identified and challenged. Yet the newspaper industry remains largely unmoved and continues to perpetuate racism without any kind of accountability, except to shareholders.
The dilemma for liberals is that their request for 'balance' can be ignored if a newspaper so chooses. And yet liberals can do no more than 'request', for fear of offending a sacred cow - freedom of the press. The result is that nothing changes and press-fuelled racist violence against asylum seekers continues. But 'press freedom' is not the freedom of large corporations to generate racism for profit. Every problem of the day - whether it be SARS, house prices or even, as one paper reported, the decline in the number of swans on the river Lea – is blamed on outsiders. One feel that the tabloids and the Home Office sometimes sing from the same hymn sheet – for state racism is a factor to contend with and the overall engineering of public opinion.
The editors of right-wing
newspapers demand their right to freedom of expression and use it to propagate
race hate. Yet they have no qualms in calling for the expulsion of a Muslim
cleric (Abu Hamza) on the grounds that he 'preaches hate'. If only they followed
their own advice.
This article appears in
issue 71 of
CARF magazine.
© Institute of Race Relations 2003