Refugees' Right to Information and Communication in the Australia and Pacific Region

Abstract

Around the world today there are over twenty million people 'of concern' to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) - people who have fled their homes because of war, disaster or human rights abuses. It seems an overwhelming number. How can journalists how translate this figure into stories that can touch people, and explain the situation of refugees? This article gives an overview of refugee issue in Australia and the Pacific region, beginning with a story about one refugee family.

An excerpt from the article follows:

"Radio Australia journalist Peter Mares argues: 'Media reporting can shape public perceptions of refugees and asylum seekers. Compassionate and sympathetic coverage can help to promote public understanding and encourage generous assistance to refugees and others in need. Negative reporting can generate and intensify feelings of fear.'

Mares has highlighted the contradiction for journalists covering refugee issues: 'The level of concern and empathy expressed in the media for the plight of refugees and asylum seekers is in inverse relation to their proximity to the place where any given report appears. Viewed from a distance, displaced people are often portrayed as helpless victims of circumstance, deserving of compassion and assistance. This imagery changes dramatically when refugees and asylum seekers make their way to the developed world to seek protection under the 1951 Convention. Refugees and asylum seekers who display this level of agency suddenly shed the veneer of innocence and become a threat to the order and security of the receiving state. They are transformed from passive objects of compassion, into untrustworthy actors who provoke a sense of fear.'

As journalists, how can we avoid negative reporting that encourages well-off people to turn against 'others' fleeing from tyranny, while maintaining our responsibility to accurately report on a crucial issue facing the country and the region? A worrying feature of the Tampa crisis was that talkback radio and sections of the press often uncritically accepted statements from senior political leaders, without checking their truth...."

Our apologies, but this article is no longer available on the WACC website.