Page - 235 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

Round Table Discussion | Worst Case and Best Practice 235 investigative reporter collects a story on drug dealing among gangs within the inner city. Both reporters present the story to the editor. I wonder which one will get published. Both are reality. But one reality is a little bit more angled than the other. I really wonder what we can do to change these newsvalues. In the past, America had some companies that started up “good news newspapers”. Newspapers that only have good news. They didn't last long. But one has to admire the courage for just presenting good news. But even reporting stories exclusively dealing with gangs and drugs and guns and so on would have less of an impact if there were neutralizing devices in society outside, where there were positive role models. So that people would see that these stories in the news are simply isolated incidents, that there are people of colour in positions of power, in positions of authority and so on. We need to talk about comprehensive change, which can also be a cowardly way, because comprehensive change is so difficult to achieve that it’s like using a platitude, knowing well that the platitude will never be real. Kenneth Starck This question of making migrants feel at home, for some reason, has kind of annoyed me. Because I try to figure out what usually plays a role that a migrant feels at home. And I suspected in many cases it may drive him away, because they left home to begin with. It seems to me, if they come to our homeland, our homeland, then it is for some rationale, there are some reasons and it is not necessary to make them feel as though they’re back home again. Otherwise they can just go back. It seems to me that we are going to be talking about a hope, a future, an expectation for family, for the children, an educational equality and so forth. Heinz Bonfadelli I would add a second level. I think journalism is not only to represent reality but it needs a reflective; I call this meta-journalism. I think it is important to add a level of reflection to the coverage. Especially in the commercial electronic media in Switzerland we have lots of very young journalists, with low wages and with a low level of education. And I think, here it‘s necessary to have more education to bring in this kind of level of reflection. For instance, we did observations in local TV-stations and there was an incident that happened in a Swiss court: some young guys from Morocco had sex with some young girls and they caught these young people. Then there is one camera team, they get the story, they have to go out just straight to the location. Without any possibility to, say, do some thinking about the