A very sad day for journalism, for truth and justice . . . . . . . . . .

Dear BBC,

The 23 July was a very sad day for journalism, for truth and justice, for the BBC and for the 26% of those compassionate Brits who were stuck in the MilgramÕs experiment last night, who on the morning after had to come to terms with the fact that 74% of people watching your programme would refuse asylum even to a woman whose entire family perished in a sealed container in a desperate attempt to escape persecution. (Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram)

Asylum is a sad affair by its nature, but yesterday was a very sad day for Great Britain for completely different reasons.

I understand  that the Corporation is going through a tough time in respect to  the scandal  of Dr. Kelly's suicide and No 10, but was it really necessary to take it out on asylum seekers?

My understanding is that the programme makers' intention was to dispel the myths about the asylum. Maybe that programme happened on some other BBC channel in a parallel universe because what happened last night was biased, uninformed, unprofessional, misleading and racist and if this is your idea of objectivity and informed public debate, fairly soon those 26% of Britons will be forced to seek asylum from persecution in other countries of the world.

I am not going to waste my time on the Kilroy programme, as it simply wasn't worth passing comment on. I am going to  focus on the evening part of the TV Asylum Day as I did not have the energy to consume full length of the TV and  radio programmes as well as Kilroy show all in one day!

1. First of all, the format of the evening debate was inappropriate. It was quite obvious that you couldn't get leading refugee, human rights and aid agencies and experts to cooperate with your take on your Jerry Springer-throw-them-to-the-lions type  discussion. So you ended up with 2 politicians, a bunch of loud anonymous 'protesters'  in urgent need of dental care (presumably the lack of it is the asylum seekers fault too) and a group of nice people unable to structure their altruistic emotions into a rational argument against blatant prejudice and misinformation. 

Who are these people, what are their credentials, how did you find them, why do they hate asylum seekers so passionately and why did no one try to talk to them and confront their prejudice with facts? This would have made much more interesting television. Instead you have provided space for misinformation that has now been given credibility of primetime BBC1 as it was left unchallenged, and indeed reinforced by the telephone vote.

Let me give you an example - when one of the elderly 'protesters' complained about  Britain being a boat with 60 people and suddenly another 30 or 40 want to climb on and there isnÕt enough food, a balanced programme would have allowed advocates or experts to address that argument at the very least. The audience should have been allowed to hear the facts translated into the same argument and the facts are: If there was a boat that represented Britain you would have to imagine 5,000 Britons on that boat and 6 of those 5,000 would be asylum seekers (4 young adults and 2 children). Now, the question is would 5,000 people find enough room and food and water between them to accommodate an extra 10 human beings who would otherwise be killed, raped or tortured?

It would have also been interesting to do a bit of maths and show how official figures add up: 59,000.000 Brits  divide by 86,000 asylum seekers a year equals 1 Asylum seeker per 694 Brits or 2 per 1,388 or 4 per 2,776 or 8 asylum seekers per 5,552 Brits.

Out of those 8 per 5,552 - how many are educated, willing and capable to work and contribute, how many are decent people who stand against prejudice, discrimination for human rights, democracy and freedom of speech? How many of 5,552 Britons know about human rights, the Geneva convention, and the real statistics? Of course you donÕt know because you did not ask.

This means that it would take around 90 to 120 years of constant immigration at this level and 0 birth rate for refugees to overrun Britain (based on the assumption that they would never integrate and live forever).

You could have even had lovely Peter Snow, with his charts to present something like this. But why bother, it is just a programme about asylum seekers - where hysterical debate can be very quickly put together to fill in 3 hours of prime time television. Who cares about the truth, justice, facts or an informed debate.

2. The cases you have shown are all very complex cases and you have reduced them to several minutes and no factual evidence. It is true that the Home Office operates on the same premise and the fact that asylum seekers get legal advice does not mean they get good legal advice but hey that is not important is it - after all they are just asylum seekers and they should be grateful. It never occurred to you to ask the question about the quality of legal representation and the fact that all the good lawyers are so overworked, that their lists have been closed forever. It never occurred to you to raise the question about the refusal to set up an Independent Documentation Centre where credible information on the situation in the countries of origin could be compiled and updated for use by refugees, their advocates as well as the Home Office and the general public. It never occurred to you to look at good practice in other countries such as Canada, which has separate economic immigration process and asylum claims that are assessed and decided by the Independent Refugee Board, which prevents politicians from meddling in international human rights legislation and using it to score cheap political points with right wingers. Or at Family Records Centres in this country like the one in Kew Bridge, that is so brilliantly organised, so it is easier to trace information about my friend's Jewish ancestors who came here 100 years ago than about current asylum seekers. And of course lets blame asylum seekers for that.

You failed to provide any factual background for any of the countries your arguments were 'hear-say' while 20 minutes on the Internet would produce the UN, State Department, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International reports on political upheaval as well as human rights abuses in every country on your programme last night. This is very dangerous because you claimed that you were dispelling the myths but you were actually perpetuating them. Especially in the case of Slovak Roma people, where there is huge evidence of institutional racism and persecution. But hey, why would you want to point that out when the same thing happens to them here - they replace one kind of abuse for the other Ð so they must be economic migrants.

Good reporting of this issue is so easily done and it can be  informative, objective and good television - you have no excuse for your sloppy and unprofessional approach. It was so bad that it did not even make me angry - it just makes me feel sad, disappointed and sorry for the asylum seekers, the  BBC and this country.

3. Let me now move on to the Panorama programme. I have no problem with criminals being exposed. In 1996 I was a reporter on the Undercover Britain programme that exposed dodgy lawyers and employers who are exploiting immigrants and desperate asylum seekers. I am well aware of production requirements and pitfalls of undercover filming. It is difficult to get this genre right, even with straightforward issues let alone complex and emotional ones. Your programme was misleading and one sided and apart from emotional outbursts by the reporter, it failed to address any of  the issues, it failed to inform and it failed to balance. This imbalance, so inherent in media discourse on asylum, means that all asylum seekers are perceived as economic migrants in search of a better life, scroungers and criminals. What your elitist, middleclass, spoiled, quasi-liberal state of mind cannot understand is that programmes like this give licence to all kinds of low-lifes to abuse, attack and even murder ALL asylum seekers. They wonÕt stop to check and ask if they are genuine and what they have fled from, and if they have been accepted or refused by the Home Office.  They won't stop to check Amnesty International reports or read the Guardian, but they will read tabloids and watch TV and they will be miserable because they live on a rundown estate and are stuck in a poverty trap and here you are dangling in front them an easy excuse for all their problems - illegal economic migrants, pretending to be asylum seekers. This is irresponsible and dangerous not only for the asylum seekers who have to face the music every day but for the fabric of this society.

The only way to redress the failings of a such programme and balance what you have shown last night would be to send your reporter to Turkey to be beaten up, raped, abused and then put her on a back of a lorry and have her, as a British citizen, claim asylum in Iran, which by the way accepted 2,000.0000 Afghan refugees.  Or send her to live as a woman in a Taliban run Afghanistan for 10 years after which she could be sent to claim asylum in Pakistan.  Please do not insult our intelligence!

This programme was poorly conceived and poorly executed. It was supposed to embarrass politicians who obviously don't care and it ended up stigmatising all asylum seekers even further.

4. Your final round of debate continued in the same tone of a misinformed, emotional rant. I was so desperate for any sign of sanity and the only straw I could clutch on to was one phrase used by Simon Hughes - For the first time in the public domain I heard someone use 'responsibility sharing' instead of usual 'burden sharing', when referring to refugees in Europe. But has nothing to do with the BBC.

So what did we learn from your programmes last night? Did anyone change their perspective because of the 'new' information that you have presented? Did you get any of the 'protestors' to listen and hear the facts? Did you get any of the refugees to present the facts in a proper manner? Did you get any of the experts and advocates to inform the debate? Did you challenge any of the prejudice? Did you discuss positive and humane ways forward? 

Did you dispel any myths? - Well in my case you did - the myth about the BBC as an objective and responsible public service broadcaster.

It is interesting how other reports on asylum seekers being beaten up and abused are usually confined to the BBC website and never make hours of prime time on BBC1. Maybe next time you should follow it up with the perpetrators of these attacks and check where did they get the information about 'all these bogus illegal asylum seeking criminals'- you never know, maybe they might use your Asylum Day as a part of their defence.

Asylum Day was such a missed opportunity to address the underlying discourse of  such a hysterical debate on immigration. If you were able to present the facts and figures and look at the emotive language and issues asylum seekers and immigrants are blamed for, you would have to face much more complex issues. The debate about asylum has nothing to do with asylum. It is just an expression of a more complex identity crisis that is brewing in this country over the past 50 years. Asylum seekers are just the convenient 'other' through which we define ourselves. Every identity is a complex negotiation of who we are and who we are not. However, when we are no longer sure who is that 'we' the only way to define ourselves is through what we think we are not - the 'other'. So if asylum seekers are criminals, bogus, lazy scroungers, dirty and sick, the implication is that 'we' are the opposite.

What are the people of Britain really saying when they blame asylum seekers for poverty, NHS lists, crime, unemployment, lack of social housing etc.? Well the best way is to imagine who would they blame next if all asylum seekers were to disappear from the face of the Earth?

Immigration as a concept in this country has a very unique meaning, as indeed it has in every other culture. The historic memory that informs that concept and understanding of the immigration is the one of powerful empire where Brits were the ones going to other countries and dominating them in a military, political, economic or cultural way so now there is this immigration angst that 'they' will come here and try to conquer 'us'.

If one was to read tabloids and watch your Asylum Day where the debate on Asylum and Immigration is taking place it would not be difficult to conclude that  this is the most miserable country in the world. And  your programme last night did nothing to make British audiences feel good about their own country and about themselves. Your 74% of NO's are the best testimony to that.

This is a complex analysis that requires time and academic rigour but it is not impossible and it could even make good television.

I hope I have given you plenty of food for thought. I hope that you will take my criticism constructively. In my attempt to be constructive I even gave you some practical examples of things that are usually omitted in a public debate. I would also like to add that the Welcome to Britain programme was of a much better standard and it was a pity you decided not to air one of those as a part of the Asylum Day.

Sincerely yours,
                        Zrinka Bralo
                                          Recovering Journalist