The Sun: Sensationalising already sensational MigrationWatch figures

The Sun reported on a ‘devastating new’ Migration Watch report today in a piece headlined Massive school cost of migrants, and rarely have I ever seen such blatant sensationalism. The Migration Watch report has already been dissected in a couple of places:

Dunce’s cap for Andrew Green by Phillipe Legrain

Migration Watch bollocks on new students and ‘strain’ on education, by Sunny Hundal

Migration Watch needed to show their working by Full Fact’s Edgar.

What I did want to highlight was the graphic used by The Sun in their piece headlined Massive school cost of migrants.

There is the lovely ‘£195 bn migrant kid school bill’ slapped across the bottom, alongside lots of scary looking numbers and a picture (posed by models) to illustrate how ‘migrant kids’ are affecting our classrooms.  Certain words in the accompanying text are highlighted in bold capitals, and are accompanied by some of the numbers in the graphic above. The whole piece will almost certainly incite plenty of outrage from the readers, and is, to me at least, overt bigotry. At the very end of the article, where I have come to expect such things, this small nod to balance is included:

However last night the findings of the report were challenged by Jasmin Bukic, operations manager of the Migrants Resource Centre in London.

She said: “The success of many schools in London in recent years is a result of the arrival of migrant children with a strong belief in hard work and discipline.

“The parents of these children are working hard too and paying taxes which help to fund the schools.”

If you can bear to look, here is a link to the comments section.

Advertisement