The Power of Words

On August 4th, 1998, the Evening Herald featured a front-page headline reading "Crackdown on Illegal Refugees". This wasn't a particularly unusual headline; the newspaper, along with its fellow Independent titles, had made alarming headlines about refugees something of a speciality over the previous year or two. The first paragraph was also familiar: "Minister for Justice John O'Donoghue has promised tough new laws to halt the flood of illegal refugees."

Par for the course, too, was the fact that the headline had little to do with the story, which actually concerned possible sanctions against trucking companies allegedly involved in carrying refugees.

However, this sort of violent language, of "floods" and "crackdowns", has been cited by asylum-seekers as contributing to the verbal and physical attacks they are subjected to daily ­ attacks that rarely make the pages of the Evening Herald.

Hypocrisy and Crocodile Tears
The paper's hypocrisy would be funny except that the consequences are so serious: on the following Saturday, August 8th, the Herald's lead story was headed "Attacked for Daring to Care". This sympathetically chronicled the misfortune of an Irish charity worker trying to raise funds for a "Romanian babies appeal". His pub-to-pub efforts met with little success and some physical violence, it seems, because of a "backlash" against Romanians here.

In other words, the Herald uses inflammatory language and stirs up resentment against refugees, then cries crocodile tears for a surprising victim of its campaign. Media outlets have often defended themselves against such criticisms by saying that they regularly offer conflicting opinions on such issues. However, the impact of a wild headline - seen by all passers-by at a newstand - can often overwhelm more measured commentary inside a paper. Even The Irish Times, bastion of liberalism, responded to the Wexford migrants with a page-1headline, "Wexford braced for new influx of refugees" ­ as if a county that welcomes thousands of visitors every week in summer was going to be knocked into Connacht by a few dozen Romanians and Romany gypsies.

The Sunday Independent has long been the master of feigning balance while actually pushing an hysterical line on a given issue. On August 9th its liberal columnist Brendan O'Connor wrote sensibly on page 16: "As long as responsible journalists call a trickle a flood they encourage racism". Nonetheless, a banner headline stretched across pages 6 and 7: "Promised land draws a human flood".

Another Sunday Independent headline worried about the consequences as "Dublin's racial mix explodes". And when the newspaper conducted an opinion poll on the issue, the big story was that "65 per cent (accused) the newcomers of being economic migrants" (in braket added); the fact that 61 per cent said asylum-seekers should be allowed to work merited less attention. The sub-headline, "Survey finding fuels concern at growing xenophobia", is another for the crocodile-tears file.

Nasty Passions and Falling Standards
When a newspaper like this hits on a subject that it reckons stirs up nasty passions, it can usually be counted on to lose its professional standards as well as its scruples. That August 9th Sunday Independent screamed on page 1: "Asylum-seekers fake torture" and "Nigerian plot to falsify torture and rape evidence for asylum". The report, from crime correspodent Liz Allen, claimed there was "a widespread plot" along these lines.

The evidence? One document seen by the reporter, apparently a letter to a woman in Nigeria advising her on what to say on arrival in Ireland. All other inferences in the story were drawn from anonymous Garda sources and Department of Justice speculation that many Nigerians were telling similar stories.

Nowhere did the story reflect that what is really "widespread" is human-rights abuse in Nigeria.

The Herald's standards are similar. "Another 400 [refugees] were said to be waiting in France for a chance to cross," reporter Michael Laverty wrote on August 4th. Said by whom? He continued about the Romanian refugees: "It can cost as little as 35 (pounds) to get to Ireland." As it happens, the very next day's editions featured the same reporter writing a better-informed story about the trauma of the trip across Europe, pointing out that its cost would likely be at least 10 times that amount. But never did he admit that the earlier story was wrong.

And that did not stop the Herald, however, from reporting uncritically the Romanian Embassy's denial of human-rights abuses in that country, under the front-page headline: "Embassy admits illegals milking system". The crucial word, "admits", makes its appear that the embassy would have an interest in standing up for Romany refugees but could not, in all honesty, do so; of course, the opposite is the case - the embassy's job is to defend the Romanian state against accusations of wrong-doing.

Irresponsible Journalists on the Rampage
The use of dubious sources to produce a hyped-up story reached its most disgraceful heights in June 1997, when the Star ran a story headed "Refugee rapists on the rampage". Gardai were warning women to "stay away from refugees after a spree of sex assaults", the story said. "Top Garda sources" were cited to the effect that "prostitutes and minors are the main target of rapacious Romanians and Somalians".

The article mentioned no charges or convictions brought against refugees; and the "top Garda sources" turned out to be one anonymous Garda in Fitzgibbon Street station - who was violating Garda policy by speculating to the media about the nationality or immigration status of a criminal suspect.

Arguably, on the whole coverage of the refugee question has improved since its racist nadir in 1997. While local radio in Dublin has continued to stoke up racist sentiments, care has been taken at RTE, in particular, to present the human face of refugees in TV and radio broadcasts. This has its drawbacks, too; there is an implicit media insistence that a genuine refugee should be prepared to tell his or her often painful life story to a watching nation. Three-hour interviews in the privacy of the Department of Justice are bad enough - but three-minute interviews for national television exert a different sort of pressure. Undoubtedly, many asylum-seekers prefer this sort of exposure to more violent, alarmist headlines. "After a headline that said 'Crackdown on refugees¹, [my friend] was badly beaten up by eight men on O'Connell Street," Khalid Ibrahim told The Irish Times (February 25th, 1998).

Scapegoating Refugees
"I think the reason there is negative coverage is to make people busy with something which distracts them from the real problems," Ibrahim continued. "It has a certain shock value, and people can think the blame for problems like unemployment and housing shortage lies with refugees".

Sometimes the media make this scapegoating connection quite explicit. The Evening Herald tagged the results of a Simon community survey on to the end of one of its front-page "Crackdown on refugees" stories: "Meanwhile, a new survey has found that three out of four people who live on London's streets are Irish". Look at that, the reader is meant to conclude: we can't even look after our own and we're taking in all these refugees.

No Comment
And finally there are the commentators, whose anti-immigration opinions are rarely subjected to basic, fact-checking scrutiny. The most notorious recent example was the hysterical editorial in the Wexford People.

Mary Ellen Synon sounds plausible in the Sunday Independent when she writes:"The State has the obligation to secure its borders and to decide who will enter; and to decide on the grounds of what is best for Ireland, and not on the grounds of what is best for the immigrants".

Perhaps that is how she would like the State's "obligations" to be defined. Fortunately, our membership of the United Nations means the facts are rather different.

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