Vocal Voices

Down at the bottom of the article about the "Migrant Caravan" heading for the US.

It says:

Those seeking asylum must be fleeing due to a serious fear of persecution in their home country. Under international law, these are considered refugees.

If an asylum seeker enters the US illegally, they are still entitled to a hearing of their claim.

Economic migrants are those seeking a better quality of life - and even if they are fleeing devastating poverty, they are not considered refugees and do not have the same protections.

I have noticed a significant change in Guidance in the BBC. On climate change the guidelines are that "balance" doesn't include some crackpot who doesn't believe in Global Warming just because s/he doesn't trust politicians. It also doesn't mean you can present cooked up graphs and data just to provide a "balanced" view.

I see the truth is almost the last sentence in the article. However, perhaps, in time it will move further up.

Every so often on migrant stories the BBC puts a rider at the bottom of the article:

BBC Terminology.

It basically states that the BBC does know the difference between an asylum seeker, a refugee and an economic migrant.

It is usually because it might not have been made clear in the article.

On some other stories you can find, right at the very bottom of the page, the link:

Why you can trust BBC News

This leads to loads of other links about the BBC, its Charter, editorial processes etc..

It is all about covering bottoms.

Workingman wrote:It is all about covering bottoms.

Well put, Workingman.

True I just had not seen it before and I do know about their new guidance re: climate change reporting.

Just to clarify: I am not defending the BBC.

When talking about the situation in the Med it goes out of its way to avoid calling the people illegal immigrants or economic migrants, which is what they really are. Instead we get "boat people", "migrants" and "victims of human traffickers".

The terminology paragraph only seems to appear after somebody has called the BBC out for its blatant clouding of the issues though omission.

Workingman wrote:The terminology paragraph only seems to appear after somebody has called the BBC out for its blatant clouding of the issues though omission.

Hmmm, I'll have to watch out for that. But I believe it implicitly. Trust the BBC? As far as I can throw this building I am sitting in. Sad, changed, days.

Suff wrote:Down at the bottom of the article about the "Migrant Caravan" heading for the US.

It says:

Economic migrants are those seeking a better quality of life - and even if they are fleeing devastating poverty, they are not considered refugees and do not have the same protections.

The atmosphere on the subject has changed quite considerably. Even on websites like the Guardian, any columnist trying to sell the benefits of mass immigration gets shot down in flames.
Open borders are a joke and more and more people are seeing it. If you support open borders you support the right of people to just walk into another country and expect all the benefits of living there just like that.

Plus with figures on line showing the population explosion in some of these countries where people are "fleeing hardship" (they are always "fleeing" something) or "only looking for a better life" it is pretty easy to prove why they are "fleeing". Too many countries are producing too many people; they can't feed them, employ them, educate them or care for them, so they become economic migrants.

I'm not 100% against immigration btw. There are lots of people from around the world, educated, intelligent people, who I would like to see living here. But we've had too much of the other I'm afraid.