Discrimination

Irish media outlets have nothing to congratulate themselves about when it comes to coverage of immigration and asylum issues.

Back in the late 1990s, research by Andy Pollak – then of The Irish Times – found a consistent pattern of misleading and dehumanising treatment of refugees and asylum seekers in newspapers, especially in Independent group titles. More recently, Catherine Reilly, a journalist at Metro Eireann, studied the output of the Irish Daily Mirror in 2002-03, and found a similar pattern.

Nonetheless, the coverage here – and the general level discourse on these issues – has rarely stooped to the depths reached in Britain, on show again now in the run-up to a general election. The Express newspapers, in particular, use racism as their life-blood: last week's Sunday Express page-one story, for example, said that Labour feared a Tory victory because of the Conservatives' strong campaigning on "asylum, crime and immigration" – or, to translate for non-Express readers, race, race and race.

Tuesday's Daily Express went for full-blown provocation, putting Labour and a vulnerable minority group together in its gunsights: 'GIVE MORE LAND TO GYPSIES ORDERS PRESCOTT', the front-page headline screamed.

So what's been going on in the Irish media lately in relation to these issues? Astonishingly little. After a year that featured a contentious referendum about citizenship, and agreement in all the leader columns that Ireland had changed utterly in terms of its people's cultural and ethnic make-up and that these changes constituted one of the biggest stories around, the issues have dropped below the radar.

One might have hoped, for example, that with the citizenship issue settled, journalists might have looked hard at deportations, conditions for asylum seekers, life on paltry "direct provision" and in poor hostels, the care (or otherwise) of unaccompanied children etc. With the honourable exception of Village, these stories have been hard to find. So have more positive stories about multiculturalism.

Meejit decided that as a decent indicator of priorities for top-of-the-range Irish journalism, items on Morning Ireland and the front page of The Irish Times (including the news digest) would be a good start. They were examined for every date in 2005 up to Thursday, 10 March (thanks to their good websites).

In the newspaper, only two immigration-related stories appeared on page one, both by social-affairs correspondent Carl O'Brien – who occupies the paper's migrant ghetto along with Kitty Holland. Both stories related to administrative announcements of a "green card" system and of a new State agency, and neither quoted any immigrants; the second briefly quoted an Irish "advocate" for migrant rights.

The news digest, where many more stories can be referred to, was even more bereft. New immigration crackdown on 8 February was about Britain, not Ireland.

Morning Ireland scarcely fared better. The recent story about the Nigerian embassy's charges for passports was the only occasion I could find when "foreign" voices in Ireland were heard – and that segment (a rather chaotic cacophony) was lifted from another programme. It is also worth noting that, despite the terrible conditions inflicted on thousands of Nigerians by the Irish State, RTÉ took notice only when they were being troubled by Nigerian officials – and inevitably threw in the word corruption.

In fairness, another handful of Morning Ireland stories followed up mistreatment of (European) migrant workers by employers here – though again without interviewing migrants. The priority here was concisely conveyed in the intro to one item: Thousands of people who are badly needed by our economy.

Funny how their work is for our economy.