Saturday 31 January 2015

Searching for 'migrants'


If you do a search for the word 'migrants' (or 'migration') on the search-unfriendly BBC website, the resultant list of articles has an 'Editor's Choice' pinned at the top.

It's not, as you might expect, a balanced Q&A-type piece on the subject. No, it's an article called:
Global migrants: Which are the most wanted professions?
It provides an interactive guide, includes a piece (full of pro-immigration voices) entitled Mass migration: Who benefits and why? (by Andrew Walker, BBC World Service economics correspondent), some case studies highlighting positive individual stories, and a closing article called How it's worked out (by Camilla Costa, BBC Brasil) whose opening paragraph describes the "plentiful" stories  about "the problems [immigrants] allegedly bring" before adding a "But".

The BBC News website, therefore, has pinned a 'Editor's Choice' looking at the positive benefits of mass migration to the top of its list of search results for 'migrants'. 

So what happens if you search using the word 'immigration?' This time three 'Editor's Choice' articles result:
None of this exactly helps the BBC free itself from the well-founded charge that it has a particularly strong pro-immigration bias.

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