Page - 240 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

Round Table Discussion | Worst Case and Best Practice 240 and I was an ombudsman for a news organization for a while. I have written some columns in respondence to readers who were objecting to things, as they pertained to nationalities and ethnic groups and so forth: reporters confusing different nationalities or ethnic groups, for example, referring to them as part of a certain sector or group, when they weren’t. You know, they just happened to have a funny hat or something like this and the reporters drew an immediate conclusion. Occasionally we would get complaints about that. But also about crime reporting: reference to nationality or the ethnic origin of someone who committed a crime. Simply asking the question, is it relevant to identify an individual in that way? Often it is not. It may be on occasion, but there should be a rationale for inclusion of that information. The website of ONO, the organization of news ombudsmen, will list different topics that news ombudsmen around the world have written about. And, I believe, there is one dealing with ethnicity reporting, which will provide again a list of practices, maybe not the worst, but pretty bad practices. Petra Herczeg I think the worst practice in Austria is that the population expects assimilation of the migrants and there’s no discussion in the public about the meaning of the words “assimilation” and “integration”. There has to be more information about these topics and about these basic words: what do they mean? They’re mixed up all the time. And that's the fault of the journalists. Therefore, I think it is necessary to have more education for journalists on this field. From the audience I just want to add what Horst Pöttker has said about taking notice. It's not only important to take notice but it's, in doing so, important to take a minute and think about who you ask, who you make your source for the article and who you give a voice in the article that you write. I can give a little example from Dortmund. There is a discussion about a mosque being built or not being built, and in relation to that there have been demonstrations and also discussions in the newspapers about how migrants feel living in Dortmund and whether they arrived here and feel at home or not. And the journalist who wrote this article asked representatives of the church, representatives of the local government and of the trade unions – but no migrants themselves. Members of the church said that the migrants of the second generation feel a little better, but they didn't get the chance themselves to have a voice in this article. I think this is