Racist reporting under scrutiny

A new UK-based web site has been set up to log negative and unethical media coverage of refugee and asylum seeker issues.

The Media HateWatch UK project will be based at www.diversity-online.org, a site funded by the European Union and run by the International Media Working Group Against Racism and Xenophobia, known as IMRAX.

Co-editor Lionel Morrison said the project had been established in response to concern about UK media coverage of asylum issues, particularly tabloid coverage.

"We've made space on our web site for this project to deal with this abuse of coverage - to try and dissect the news," he said.

The site lists the six most recent submissions of abusive or hateful stories on asylum seekers, and provides a full archive of submissions for journalists or researchers who register with the site.

"Nearly every story recorded on the HateWatch site breaks the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) code. They are flouting their own rules," said Mr Morrison.

The PCC is an independent body that deals with public grievances about press coverage. The PCC Code of Practice is drawn up by editors themselves and all publications - national and regional newspapers and magazines - are bound to this code.

By building a body of evidence in the HateWatch archive, the organisers hope ultimately to take action against publications that print racist and unethical coverage.

"The attitude of the Attorney General has been that it is not worth prosecuting publishers for just one story. We're hoping that this project will show this trend over a long period so that the Attorney General can't use the same excuse."

Mr Morrison also observed that since the end of the war in Iraq, negative coverage of asylum issues had accelerated.

See also:
http://www.diversity-online.org
http://www.pcc.org.uk/
http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/story620.html

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