Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1283588
12 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 30 AUGUST 2020 OPINION Glenda Cooper Media must remember asylum seekers are human beings, not just a good story THE reports were compelling. Broadcasters tracking flim- sy-looking dinghies crammed with people, with the reporters so close that they could actual- ly shout questions to those ne- gotiating the hazardous traffic of the English Channel. Reports by the BBC and Sky News have been condemned by opposition MPs and campaign- ers as grotesque and voyeuris- tic. In one live report, a boat containing a BBC Breakfast crew got worryingly close to a dinghy, where those travelling in it were bailing out water with a plastic container. Soon after, a Sky News reporter pulled alongside another overcrowd- ed craft to shout questions. The satirical site Newsthump summed up the situation with the headline: BBC and Sky neck and neck in race to see who will be first to film a boat actually sinking. Coverage of asylum-seek- ers and migration is fraught and often criticised. But sur- rounding these reports are two issues: whether this story should be reported now and, if so, what the role of a journalist should be. Most objecting to the story's coverage see it as inspired by remarks by the former UKIP leader Nigel Farage. He spoke of a "shocking invasion" on the Kent coast – remarks prompt- ly condemned by anti-racism campaigners. The media's re- sponse is that the Home Of- fice's request for help from defence chiefs – as well as the appointment of a "clandestine threat commander" – means it is an urgent and important news story. But this reliance by journal- ists on politicians for sources – as colleagues at City University of London and I found when carrying out a recent study on the way the UK media reports asylum-seeking – means that the line political elites adopt often cascades down to the public through the media and helps shape opinion. As Refugee Action tweeted, the focus should be on effective solutions rather than hostile rhetoric, with politicians say- ing little about safe and legal routes for refugees or a reset- tlement programme. Onlooker or participant? But if we accept this is a story that should be covered, what is the role of the reporter? Many on social media were angry that the reporters in their boats did not rescue those who appeared to be in difficulty. First, as a senior figure from a media organisation told me, if those in the boats had been in immediate peril there's no question of what would have happened: they would have helped. Maritime law dictates a ship's master must help a ves- sel in distress as well. But what if the danger is not immediate- ly apparent? Traditional journalistic norms say the reporter bears witness to, rather than partic- ipates in, events. But coverage of humanitarian stories has al- ways been a fraught exception where the lines are frequently blurred. One of the most famous cas- es was Kevin Carter's pho- tograph of a little girl with a vulture lurking nearby during the 1993 Sudan famine. Cart- er waited for 20 minutes to see if the vulture would spread its wings, giving him a better im- age. He eventually chased it away, leaving the girl to strug- gle to a nearby feeding cen- tre. After the image appeared, Carter was both praised for the power of the photograph and condemned for not rescuing the girl. In her book on Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death, Susan D. Moeller com- mented: "Being close enough to photograph the starving child meant being close enough to help. The responsibility to bear witness does not automatically outweigh the responsibility to get involved." Not long after Carter's photo- graph, norms of distance were being challenged by people such as the BBC's former war correspondent Martin Bell, who said he could no longer en- dure what he called "bystander journalism" and instead ar- gued in favour of a "journalism of attachment", defined as an approach "that will not stand neutrally between good and evil, right and wrong, victim and oppressor". Necessary distancing But how far should journal- istic involvement go? When the 2010 Haiti earthquake happened, viewers watched the CNN presenter Ander- son Cooper grab a bloodied boy and drag him to safety from a mob, while his report- er colleague, Dr Sanjay Gup- ta, performed brain surgery on a 15-year-old girl and sin- gle-handedly staffed a field hospital overnight. The website Gawker de- scribed this as a "strange apoth- eosis" in coverage, breaching the news/newsmaker barrier, with the writer Adrian Chen saying that Cooper and Gupta were effectively being Clark Kent and Superman at the same time. "At what point,"