Some years ago, from the ports where the Cayucos are piled up ghost ships crowded with Canarian emigrants. Whole families left the islands clandestinely in search of a better life in Venezuela or Cuba. At present, the arrival of African migrants to the islands stars in the hate speeches of the extreme right, sometimes amplified by the media. Rodrigo Fidel Rodríguez is a researcher and professor of the degree of journalism at the University of La Laguna. Born in Caracas, he is “son of the Canarian diaspora to Venezuela.” The Licenseod in Philosophy and Information Sciences has published the book Ethical treatment of immigration in the media, in which it offers some clues on how to prevent the press from contributing to the dehumanization of the protagonists of the migratory phenomenon.
“A people of emigration like ours cannot surrender to hostility against immigrants. We are debtors of that memory, of that memory, ”he says in an interview with this newspaper. “Spain has become a plural and mestizo society that must learn to live in diversity. However, this desirable coexistence is threatened by a populist and xenophobic discourse, ”says the summary of this work, whose prologue comes from the director of the Spanish Observatory of Racism and Xenophobia, Karoline Fernández.
Rodríguez says that this guide combines an analysis of the headlines and the news that is published day by day on immigration with a look on the social perception of it in it in the Canary Islands. In addition, it includes a set of recommendations on how to address arrivals by sea. The objective is that it can serve as guidance for communication professionals and also for journalism, social work, sociology or anthropology students.
In his research, the professor has detected an evolution in the media treatment of migrations since the opening of the Atlantic route in 1994. “The professionals themselves did not know how to deal with this, then many errors were made and terms and framed terms and framed were used that were not the most appropriate from the point of view of professional ethics,” he explains. Over the years there have been improvements in the information, although there are certain “deficits” that are maintained. The accelerated rhythms of production are added to the fact that immigration has become a “politically divisive” theme, with means that are aligned with anti-immigration discourse.
Unaccompanied minors
Rodríguez has dedicated a chapter in his book to unaccompanied foreign minors. In recent years, the arrival of children and adolescents without family referents to the islands has starred in the political debate. The debate on establishing a mandatory transfer of minors to the Peninsula has marked the agenda, relegating to the background its life projects or the conditions in which they are welcomed in large emergency centers.
“Now the show we are giving for 4,500 minors in an autonomous community that receives 15 million tourists annually,” he values. “15 million tourists who consume resources for which we fill pools, who spend water, that contaminate …”, he adds. One of the proposals of the book is to avoid the use of the term “Mena”, dyed of negative connotations when being linked by the right with crime or sexual violence.
“With immigrants the thing seems that it only goes in two directions: towards criminalization or condescension,” he laments. The professor warns that “the border eats everything.” Most information has to do with borders management. “We lack stories of the day after. Of the people who are integrated, who open a business, a clothing store, a hairdresser. When is it ceases to be immigrant? ”He says.
Along these lines, the author of the book points to the need for more diverse templates in the media. “If 18% of the population in Spain is of immigrant origin, the writings would also have to have that degree of plurality to ensure that this perspective is present,” he recommends.
Human Rights, in the center
Another of the challenges facing journalism is the “assault” by informal informants in social networks and on different digital platforms. “They have conquered a very important portion of readers, who are now holders of headlines on Instagram, Tik Tok or Facebook,” he emphasizes. Along these lines, the researcher states that strategies be designed to be able to distinguish pseudomedia and informal informants of official and rigorous communication companies.
For him, information traceability is key, as well as transparency. Rodríguez recalls that what is published in the media “has an impact”, so information professionals must offer guarantees of the data they offer. To inform about the migratory phenomenon, Rodríguez insists that it is essential to start from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. “There is no first and second humanity. It is one and we all belong to her, ”he says. For him, another key is to remember that “we have not done anything special to be on the privileged side of the world.”
It also highlights the importance of how language is used. “Just as we have seen that a word like ‘Mena’ is used as a weapon of aggression, holders also contribute to forming a certain vision of things,” he warns. “If we are always associating immigration with certain negative adjectives, we contribute to making a negative portrait of this,” It is the case of the use of terms such as invasion, waved, avalanche or tsunami or present immigration as something that must be “stop, block, control and stop.” “Or worse, if we say that the Navy must be mobilized and the police,” says the teacher in relation to the proposal raised by Vox.
Rodríguez also tries to transfer to the students of the Faculty the importance of informing with ethics and rigor on the most lethal route in the world, which only in 2024 the lives of more than 9,000 people were claimed. “My phrase in recent years with them has always been the same. Us [los profesores] We are making an effort to try that what they write tomorrow in a medium is, at least, above the bar level level, ”he says. “If we do not achieve it, they will fail as professionals and, we, as teachers,” he concludes.
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