BBC immigration coverage falls short over ‘racism’ fears

Another day, another BBC slip-up. This time the much-lauded public service broadcaster has been dragged back into the spotlight after an independent review found it hadn’t been reporting fully on immigration — because it feared being labelled either ‘racist’ or ‘woke’. Oh dear…

The 75-page report, carried out by Madeleine Sumption of the Migration Observatory with Samir Shah before he became BBC chairman, revealed that journalists had been ‘anxious’ about covering issues that might appear anti-immigration. What complexities might these stories involve? Concerns from local residents about an influx of migrants to their hometowns or immigration fraud which is, er, a crime. So much for impartial journalism… 

One BBC insider disclosed that they thought that migrant-related fraud was ‘not a story you should be looking at’ due to racism worries, while another admitted:

Sometimes colleagues who find themselves covering migration without a lot of experience of it are scared about what to do, what language to use, whether they’re going to say something which is going to come across as problematic… Sometimes people are worried that we’re going to be accused of racism by the left…and of being the wokerati by the right.