“For me, the problem isn’t so much that our words aren’t sexy; the problem is that we’ve never had the leverage to get even one of them used.”
“Black people are always the poor and marginalised, even when they are not criminals, they are still struggling-never intelligent, educated individuals whose children go to university. That stuff is simply never there.”
“A journalist from a mainstream TV channel approached me to ask whether I wanted to tell her ‘my story’. That is pure racism. She did not stop for a second to consider that I was also a journalist, a colleague of hers. She saw me as a ‘testimony’.”
There are facts, and then there are news stories, narratives and representations.
To what extent are the latter able to reflect the complexity of the former?
This is a long-standing issue that primarily calls into question the role and work of the media, as well as the relationship between the media and those in power, particularly when the news focuses on social issues and phenomena that are the subject of propaganda and political speculation.
For example, it is well known that a certain way of framing migration helps to fuel mistrust, hostility and fear towards migrants, refugees, people with a migrant background and racialised groups. Alessandro Dal Lago described this many years ago as a ‘tautology of fear’.
The fact that in recent years the spread of new technologies, the use of social media platforms and, subsequently, artificial intelligence has profoundly altered the ways in which information is produced, disseminated and consumed does not (yet) render the role played by the mainstream media in shaping public opinion irrelevant. In an ‘old’ country like Italy, for example, radio and television channels remain the preferred source of information for the older population.
We have frequently addressed this topic on this website and in our white papers, focusing in particular on the characteristics of the language and media narratives relating to migration. The systematic monitoring carried out by the Carta di Roma association provides an annual snapshot of media coverage of migration by seven national daily newspapers and the leading television news programmes.
However, what tends to remain in the shadows is the origin of these narratives: the set of social, economic, cultural and institutional structural elements that determine the functioning and accessibility of the media system, hindering the consolidation of pluralistic and non-discriminatory information capable of better reflecting the plurality and complexity of contemporary society.
Can anything be done to change them? These are questions we have been asking ourselves for a long time. It is important not to stop asking them and seeking answers, knowing that the role of information – even more so in the context of the profound democratic crisis we are currently experiencing – remains crucial.
Authoritarian tendencies and populist and nationalist impulses are, in fact, growing ever stronger and find a further sounding board in the unscrupulous use of the internet by the political entrepreneurs of racism, which all too often reverberates through the mainstream media, filling them with simplifications, prejudices, stereotypes and discrimination.
The question is whether, for example, a more intense, courageous and innovative collective collaboration between racialised groups, humanitarian and anti-racist organisations, and media professionals could help to break the mono-tone narrative – both in terms of who produces the news and in terms of the content and voices featured in the stories.
This question inspired a research project carried out by Lunaria in collaboration with the Carta di Roma association, AMAM-African Media Association Malta (M), ANTIGONE (GR) and Maldita.es (Es) as part of the MILD project, More correct Information, Less Discrimination.
The quotes cited at the beginning were spoken by some of the 68 people interviewed in Greece, Italy, Malta and Spain, including journalists, activists and communications professionals, and they illustrate very well some of the limitations of the relationship between the media and the world of migration.
The findings of this study are now available online following the publication of the European report Migrants, Refugees and Racialised People: From Object to Subject of Information, available here: https://www.cronachediordinariorazzismo.org/wp-content/uploads/Mild_EU_Report_ENG_Final.pdf
The report is divided into 5 chapters, analysing the organisational context and staff composition of the organisations interviewed, the level of awareness of racism within and outside the organisations, the most common characteristics in the production of narratives, and the approaches tried so far to produce new narratives. In the final chapter, a number of recommendations outline some possible pathways for future work.
Without claiming to be exhaustive, this collective work highlights some common structural characteristics that distinguish the world of information and social communication relating to migrants, refugees, people with a migrant background and racialised individuals in the four countries examined, but suggests that change is possible. Indeed, it is already underway.
