April 6, 2009
Immigrants” as a group – the last breeding ground for political fallacy?
It is very interesting to examine the print media’s role in presenting immigration and refugee related stories as it relates to racial sensitivity and profiling. Although on the whole print media reporting is balanced certain times deleting the word immigrant or refugee and replacing same with Chinese, Filipino, Pakistani or Black would incite calls of racism. In some ways immigrants and refugees as a group remain the last breeding ground for political fallacy. The consequences are dire and fuel a system plagued with misinformation. To this end, watch out for these themes when reading immigration related stories:
- What are “immigrants”? What are refugees? Does the story distinguish?
- What is the print media’s role as it relates to the processing of immigrants and refugees? Or in short, what is the angle?
- Do the print media reflect the view of the majority of Canadians? Quote statistics?
- Should we expect the print media to have a higher standard of knowledge?
- Is the use of the terms immigrants and refugees in the story a veil to target
ethnic and racial minorities?
Something to think about when next reading a story on Canadian immigrants and refugees!