BBC migration coverage: Review finds no consistent bias but risks to impartiality
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Published
A review into the BBCâs migration coverage has found while there is no consistent bias towards one viewpoint, there are risks to impartiality.
Commissioned by the BBC board, in April 2023, Dr Madeline Sumptionâs review found while the BBC âproduces a lot of excellent content on migration⊠there are also weaknessesâ.
There were ârisks to impartiality that point in multiple directionsâ.
And it âoften tells migration stories through a narrow political lensâ.
âMore contextâ
The review, focused on news and current affairs, also suggested coverage sometimes sought narrow âbalanceâ by quoting soundbites from people with opposing views, while audiences wanted greater depth.
Viewers and listeners needed more context and explanation around complex policies such as sending asylum seekers to Rwanda, it found.
Journalists were sometimes anxious about taking on topics they felt could be hostile to migrants â even though these issues could be investigated while also being respectful towards the people involved and subjects such as immigration fraud covered âin a factual and nuanced way, without demonising migrantsâ.
And by focusing primarily on political developments, the BBC could overlook concerns such as how migration affected communities, housing, public services and the labour market.
âPublicâs viewsâ
âBBC coverage should have equal empathy for migrants and UK residents who worry about the impacts of migration,â Dr Sumption wrote.
The UK publicâs views on migration ârun the gamut from deeply sceptical to very liberalâ, her review said.
âBut audiences generally recognised that migration brings both benefits and challenges.
âThe BBC should reflect this nuance and not just the strongest views on either sideâ.
Dr Sumption spoke to more than 100 people, including journalists and experts, inside and outside the BBC, and 17 focus groups.
Many felt the coverage was largely negative, framing migration as a problem, with positives, such as migrantsâ contributions to the labour market â as well as the challenges â under-reported.
They often wanted more international context and answers to questions such as âIs the UK a âdisproportionatelyâ popular destination for migrants and asylum seekers?â
And some had noticed the coverage was more sympathetic to Ukrainians than other migrant groups.
âUkrainian migrantsâ
The BBC could do a better job of distinguishing between refugees and asylum seekers, the review found.
It was âstriking that the BBC almost never uses the term âUkrainian migrantsâ â Ukrainians are described as ârefugeesâ, even though they have not been assessed for refugee statusâ.
But it often described asylum seekers who could be sent to Rwanda as âmigrantsâ, even though many were believed to be refugees.
Some BBC journalists and external experts â regardless of their views on migration â suggested the BBC was too readily led by the political agenda, which focused heavily on small boats during the review period, even though small-boat arrivals made up only a few percent of total immigration figures.
Other routes to asylum and subjects such as emigration and integration received little coverage, the review found.
And the voices and perspectives of migrants themselves were often missing entirely from BBC reporting.
Many of the challenges arose from a lack of time or subject-specific expertise among many of the BBC journalists reporting on migration, the review found, with many migration stories covered by the online or political teams, who are thinly spread across all topic areas.
âChallenges raisedâ
BBC board member Sir Nicholas Serota, who chairs the editorial guidelines and standards committee, said: âAs recent events confirm, migration is a highly contested area of public policy â and that is why BBC reporting on it must meet the highest editorial standards.
âThis board-commissioned review finds that BBC coverage of migration has many strengths but that it could also better reflect the topicâs complexities, as well as ensuring coverage is not overly dominated by political and high-profile voices.
âWe have asked the director general and the executive to ensure all actions suggested in the review are implemented and the editorial guidelines and standards committee of the board will monitor progress to ensure all the challenges raised are addressed.
The BBC executive has endorsed six key points from the report, which it expects all journalists to consider carefully when working on stories about migration:
- cover the substance and not just the politics
- ensure audiences have enough context
- hear from migrants
- explain migration terms clearly
- represent the full range of opinions
- remember good stories also come from outside Westminster