Migration is one of the most important issues of our time and needs serious consideration. History will damn much of the UK media for failing to do that
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t the end of August the Sun put a picture of a pink poodle-shaped balloon on its front page, not to illustrate the last dog days of summer but the latest migrant hotel scandal, a story that has dominated the UK news agenda for weeks. In this case, the “balloonacy” of teaching hobbies to asylum seekers.
The silly season, in which the press seeks to entertain readers with lighter news during the summer, is cancelled this year.
Anti-migrant papers such as the Sun, the Mail, the Express and the Telegraph have, predictably, delivered most of the 1,571 stories mentioning “migrant” and “hotel” over the past month, but according to the media archive site Nexis, reporting about the issue has shifted in many other parts of the media. The plight of refugees is now consistently framed as a threat to “locals”, with even the broadsheet Times reporting a court case citing legal obligations under the inflammatory print headline: “Hotel migrant rights outweigh those of locals, ministers argue”.
