Tabloid treatment of asylum seekers under fire

TV documentary maker attacks ‘wilful misrepresentation’ and inflammatory coverage by newspaper journalists

A few days after the frozen body of an eight-year-old boy had been found in the wheel-arch of a plane arriving at Gatwick airport from Kenya, I had a briefing with an immigration intelligence officer tired of the negative press coverage of asylum. The boy had sneaked on to the runway in Nairobi and hidden himself in the plane’s landing gear. A report carried a police reassurance that even if there were survivors it was “very unlikely” a stowaway could penetrate Gatwick’s high security. Not a mention of what drove him to cling on to a plane at 10,000 metres with barely a wisp of oxygen in temperatures of 60 degrees below.

My contact made a simple point: “Don’t the tabloids understand? The bigger the risk a migrant’s prepared to take to get here, the greater the horror he’s fleeing from. Surely that’s the story.”

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