Another Tale of Two Reports

Bob Walker

If you listened to regular Sunday reporter Bob Walker's piece about Sweden on yesterday's From Our Own Correspondent you will have heard a typical BBC piece about the effects of mass migration and the migrant crisis.

It reminded me strongly of earlier pieces by Jenny Hill, for example - such as the one featuring a young Iraqi man who enthusiastically declared his gratitude to Mrs Merkel and his love for Germany or the one featuring a hard-worker Syrian welder and his German boss, "a great, kindly bear of a man" who's full of admiration for him and believes such migrants are good for the economy.

In Bob Walker's report yesterday we had a very similar cast of characters: (a) a Swedish businessman, "a bouncing ball of energy who enthusiastically welcomes refugees and in positive about their potential contribution to Swedish society"; (b) an Iraqi man who's set up his own business in a "dying" small village, thus saving a supermarket there; and to end (c) A Syrian electrician "who says he's prepared to do any job he can find" and with whose words of gratitude to Sweden Bob's report ended: 

'When no one wanted to help Sweden has taken us in. Tell them, tell the King of Sweden, we're all very grateful', he declared. 

Various refugee workers and a Syrian man living in a too-small room pass through his narrative as well, but also - and set against them - there appear two "drunk" locals, one of whom complains about the number of foreigners coming to the country. ("His words are slurred but his meaning is clear", said Bob).

Bob Walker was there following the pilgrim tail of St Olaf, who he described as "a refugee of sorts himself", and the only problem he specified with the asylum seekers' presence was "arsonists" attacking their hostels.

Some might think there are other problems too...

Yalda Hakim

Contrast Bob Walker's FOOC report with the remarkable report from Yalda Hakim on last night's Newsnight - a piece that was far from being a typical BBC report. 

It concentrated on the huge jihadi problem there, reported on Muslim-dominated no-go areas, interviewed a man who wants Sharia law imposed on Sweden, featured hostile mosque users who refused to allow the crew to film, and challenged the liberal Swedish police's counter-productive (PC) policies. 

The closing question of the accompanying BBC News website article is one you don't hear put very often on the BBC:

With so many of them saying they don't feel Swedish, perhaps the bigger question is: has integration and Sweden's experiment with multiculturalism failed?

The answer from her report looked very much like 'yes'.

The contrast between that  question and Bob Walker's "we're all very grateful" migrants closing line is stark, isn't it?