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Thursday 3 March 2011

The BBC and their choice of words

Today I made the mistake of listening to BBC Radio 4's 7am news and I heard some interesting news. Apparently 'migrants' from Tunisia have been landing on the Italian island of Lampedusa. Now this island is stark but beautiful and has been a first landing place for potential economic migrants from North Africa for a few years now. In fact it and Malta have been subject to boats of illegal migrants landing on its shores for some time now, not that you would know much about this if you relied upon the BBC for your news.

What interested me this morning was the BBC's choice of word to describe the people landing on Lampedusa: migrants. Let me help the BBC out with the correct terminology:
1. Are these these people arriving in or leaving Lampedusa? They are arriving, so they are immigrants
2. Do these people arriving have permission to come to Lampedusa? No, so they are illegal immigrants.

Thus the people arriving on Lampedusa are not as the BBC says 'migrants' but 'illegal immigrants'; I presume that the BBC will now change the term they use in their news bulletins...

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