2nd May 2017
By Tom Law

Media underequipped to cover migration?

International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD)

Study on 17 countries in the Euro-Mediterranean region identifies major challenges to migration reporting / New media award promotes fact-based journalism on migration

Vienna/Valletta, 02 May 2017: Media in many countries on both sides of the Mediterranean are under-resourced and unable to provide the time, money and appropriate level of expertise needed to tell the migration story in context. This is the main finding of the study “How does the media on both sides of the Mediterranean report on migration?” which has been launched today.

EUROMED Migration IV, funded by the Directorate General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations of the EU, commissioned the Ethical Journalism Network to conduct this study for which journalists from 17 countries have examined the quality of migration media coverage in 2015/16 from a national perspective. The study covers nine EU countries: Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Spain, and Sweden as well as eight countries in the south of the Mediterranean: Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine and Tunisia.

It finds that journalists are often poorly informed about the complex nature of migration as a phenomenon; newsrooms are also vulnerable to pressure and manipulation by voices of hate, whether from political elites or social networks. At the same time, the study highlights inspirational examples of journalism at its best –resourceful, painstaking, and marked by careful, sensitive and humanitarian reporting. The study also provides a series of detailed recommendations and calls for training, better funding of media action and other activities to support and foster more balanced and fact-based journalism on immigration, emigration, integration, asylum and other migration-related challenges.

One example of an activity designed to foster balanced reporting on this topic is the EU-funded Migration Media Award for which several partners have come together on the initiative of the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD); over 100 applications which are currently being evaluated were received for its first edition. The winning entries will be announced before the end of May and an awards ceremony will be held on 14 June in Malta, under the auspices of Malta’s EU presidency. The award is a collaboration of the EU-funded EUROMED Migration IV and Open Media Hub projects, in partnership with the European Asylum Support Office and Malta’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

ENDS

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Please be informed about a few more related topics as follows:

1. Please read the ICMPD Director General’s Foreword to this study here

2. Please read “Media and Migration from a migration perspective: Observations from the ICMPD” here

3. Euromed Migration IV will start tweeting the content, the chapters etc. from the twitter handle @EMM4_migration – please feel free to RT, also using #MigrationMedia

Further information and contacts

In Valletta: Sören Bauer: [email protected]; +356 991 25 201

In Vienna: Bernhard Schragl, [email protected], +43 676 714 7002