Tuesday, 3/5/2016

Dalal Salamah

 

The quick answer to any question about "hate speech" in Jordanian media coverage of Syrian refugees is that there is none, and that, apart from some inflammatory titles and phrases here and there and some readers" posts on a few websites, no one can claim that harsh and offensive language inciting hatred and violence against Syrian refugees in Jordan is a "phenomenon" in the local media. However, this is just the easy answer to the question because the generation of hate speech in the media against refugees goes beyond using harsh and inflammatory language, especially since the media can do this without using a single offensive word. This is exactly what the daily press has been doing. A close look at the press coverage of refugees shows that it does not use harsh language; however, the stories include "subtle" hate speech that has been generated by a number of violations of basic professional principles, which are supposed to govern media coverage.

 

The first principle is that media coverage should not neglect the humanitarian aspect. The coverage of Syrian refugees marginalizes it and does not depict refugees as humans or individuals. Instead, they are described as a featureless mass in the majority of newspapers. This naturally obscures their suffering and overlooks a fundamental fact, which is that the refugees themselves are actually "victims."

 

The second principle is that media coverage should be balanced, and should represent all sides equally, but the coverage of Syrian displacement marginalizes a main party, which is the victims themselves, including the Syrian refugees and host communities, while the official story reigns supreme.

 

The third principle is that the coverage should be based on solid facts, and this is what is lacking in a significant part of the media coverage of Syrian refugees. This coverage mainly conveys complaints about the burden resulting from the influx of refugees, and holds them responsible for the deterioration of services in various sectors. However, this is not supported by facts, as the media depend on composition as a style of writing and provide little or no information, which does not allow for developing a minimum level of understanding. They also include inaccurate or undocumented information, and the facts are often taken out of context, the thing which contributes to the development of a wrong understanding.

 

The fourth principle is that media coverage should be fair. The coverage of Syrian refugees continues to complain about the additional burden resulting from the influx of refugees and the deterioration of services and how this is linked to their arrival and the additional pressure on scarce resources. It fails to mention any positive impact they might have had on their new surroundings.

 

 

Therefore, we have coverage that mainly holds Syrian refugees responsible for many problems, without providing specific or accurate facts and information. Moreover, the coverage strips refugees of their human identity, obscures their suffering, and marginalizes their voices. This does not create much room for any sympathy with them. On the contrary, it is the ideal prescription for creating fertile ground for the growth of hate toward them.

 

For the purposes of this report, we monitored a scientific sample [1], representative of the local news content in four newspapers, Al Dustour, Al Rai, Al Ghad and Al Sabeel, between 4/1/2015 and 13/2/2016. The total number of local news items published in the sampled days was 4,552 (covering all subjects), and the length of these items varied between 30 to 1,600 words. The number of items referring to Syrian refugees was 204, i.e. 4.5% of the local news coverage. Of them, 193 items covered Syrian refugees exclusively, while 101 items only touched on the subject.

 

 

Coverage of Syrian Refugees Inhumane

 

The coverage of Syrian refugees did not succeed in drawing a mental image of them as unique individuals. They were reduced in 89% of the coverage to a featureless mass, by using the term "refugees" most of the time. Although there was sometimes some specification of the members of this mass, thus using words such as "children," "students," "elderly," and others, this specification did not exceed 18% of this news. Besides, it remained within the context of treating them as a group with no specific features.

 

In addition, 5% of the coverage ignored their presence even as a human mass. Thus, there was talk about the burden of "Syrian displacement," without mention of refugees as human beings. The coverage that referred to specific individuals did not exceed 3% of the total coverage. These were mostly passing references.

 

The detailed results of newspapers here show variation with regard to reference to refugees as individuals. Al Dustour was the lowest, as its coverage did not include any such reference, while Al Ghad was the highest as 7% of its coverage included references to individual refugees.

 

 

 

It can be said that the coverage in general was weak when it came to individual stories, such as the refugees" past, their suffering from the war, coping mechanisms, and the pattern of relationships that emerged between them and the host communities. Hence, it can be said that neglecting the human aspect of displacement and reducing refugees to mere numbers marginalized the refugees themselves as humans.

 

Perhaps, this is most evident in news about refugees crossing the barbed wire on the border between Syria and Jordan. These reports, which we see in newspapers on a daily basis, are originally short press releases of 40 words that only mention the number of arrivals and services provided to them. They are actually a template that newspapers publish after simply changing the dates and numbers of new arrivals. The irony is when the same number of people arrives on two different days, as then we read the same exact press release without any changes.

 

 

 

 

121 Syrian Refugees Cross Into Kingdom in Two Days

Amman -- Some 121 Syrian refugees, both male and female from various age groups, have crossed the Jordanian border in the past two days. According to the Moral Guidance"s statement yesterday, Border Security Forces accompanied the new arrivals to the sheltering centre and the camps equipped to accommodate them. Staff of the Royal Medical Services provided the necessary medical care and treatment for sick refugees. (Petra)

Al Ghad 27/7/2015

 

 

 

 

121 Syrian Refugees Cross Into Kingdom in Two Days

Amman -- Some 121 Syrian refugees, both male and female from various age groups, have crossed the Jordanian border in the past two days. The Border Security Forces accompanied them to the sheltering centre and the camps equipped to receive them. Staff of the Royal Medical Services provided the necessary medical care and treatment for sick refugees. (Petra)

Al Ghad 1/1/2016

 

The marginalization of the refugees" human stories led directly to marginalizing their suffering and the violations they are facing. The number of news items that mentioned any kind of suffering was 28 items, accounting for almost 14% of the sample. However, it is worth noting here that most of these news items barely alluded to actual suffering; 21 out of 28 news items were mainly about refugees crossing borders, as the ones mentioned above. These were considered within this 14% because they mention that the relevant authorities provided treatment for "sick refugees," which was considered as an allusion to suffering. This clearly shows that the coverage of refugees" suffering is not only weak, but it is practically nonexistent, because if we exclude articles about refugees crossing the border, the percentage of articles covering any kind of suffering will be around 3%.

 

 

 

Actually, some stories go beyond obscuring suffering to beautifying it. This is specifically the case in the coverage of refugees" work conditions. A previous report by AKEED, which monitored news items that cover the Syrian refugee labor force, especially ones that relate complaints about employers giving preference to refugees because they accept lower wages and longer working hours, noticed that most of these news items do not portray the indecent working conditions as violations of labor rights, but as a competitive advantage that the refugee workers enjoy. In this sample, three reports referred to this, but only one of them described the indecent working conditions as violations.

 

One of the "amusing" examples of this is a report about the impact of the Syrian refugee labor force on Mafraq governorate. The report speaks about the refugees who live in a tent compound near factories and states that living in these tents gives refugees two advantages: They do not have to pay rent, and they can be at the workplace in "record time." The report says that local workers cannot compete with them over these two aspects.

 

Reducing refugees to a single mass and marginalizing their human stories allows for the growth of hate, which does not usually thrive in circles where people understand each other"s suffering and identify with each other as humans. An understanding of the human aspect of displacement is lacking in the coverage of Syrian refugees, basically because it does not give a voice, as it is supposed to, to the refugees. This is how the coverage violates the second principle, which is:

 

Coverage of Syrian Refugees Lacks Balance

 

The main parties that have almost had monopoly over the whole story were government and UN officials, local and foreign. Their voices were heard in 97% of press items, followed by other parties, such as civil society organizations, parliamentarians, and private sector companies, whose voices appeared in 22% of the coverage. On the other hand, the voices of victims, including refugees and locals, were barely heard, as the voices of locals appeared in 6% of news items, and the voices of refugees appeared only in 4%.

 

The irony is that the coverage of the locals" voices is low. As we will see, more than half of this coverage focused mainly on the additional burden resulting from the refugees" influx and their responsibility for the deterioration of services in various sectors. This, in theory, requires that the local population raise their voices, but this is not how things are in the coverage, especially since all complaints mainly come from officials.

 

There was also a difference in the newspapers" coverage of victims. Al Dustour"s coverage of the refugees" point of view was the lowest, as it did not appear in any of its articles, while Al Rai and Al Ghad recorded the highest percentage of coverage, as the victims" point of view appeared in 7% of their articles. The presence of local community members was the highest in Al Sabeel at 23%, and it was the lowest in Al Rai at 2%.

 

 

 

 

 

It seems that the low voice of the victims has been characteristic of the media coverage of Syrian refugees since the very beginning. A previous report by AKEED, which monitored the coverage of the influx of refugees since it started in March 2011 until November 2014, found that most of the coverage was dedicated to the voices of officials, local and foreign, as their voices appeared in 71% of the press items, while the refugees" voices appeared in 9%, and the voices of the local communities appeared in only 5% of the coverage. The reason behind the low representation of refugees and locals, which are both victims of the Syrian refugee situation, can be explained by the sources of these news stories.

 

The vast majority of the coverage of Syrian refugees in newspapers was ready stories that were published as received. The items written by journalists on the case were 21% of the whole coverage. While news by the Jordan News Agency (Petra) was the main source of the coverage by 64%, press releases totaled 13%, and 2% of the coverage came from other media outlets. The content produced by journalists varied between the different media outlets; the lowest percentage was for Al Dustour at almost 12%, while the highest was for Al Sabeel at 32% and Al Ghad followed closely at 29%.

 

 

However, understanding the distribution of news sources in a factual way, and how it reflects on representing the various actors, requires explaining the kind of news that Petra disseminates. Petra, as it identifies itself, is the official news agency and its primary role is to speak on behalf of the government; it is not an independent media outlet. Moreover, the news content it disseminates is mainly made up of press releases issued by the public relations departments in ministries, governmental and nongovernmental organizations, in addition to other NGOs, such as international organizations, civil society organizations, private sector companies, and others.  Thus, these press statements, which are only subject to minimum linguistic editing, become the "news" that Petra sends later to the various media outlets that publish it as is.

 

Whether the "news" is about services that are delivered or that will be delivered to Syrian refugees and host communities or about agreements, grants, or participation in local and international meetings, it has mostly been written by organisations associated, one way or another, with the event. Even the stories that are produced by the agency itself, they are not much different from the press releases, as they use "promotional" language, and the voice of officials is the only voice contained in these stories.

 

This means that the actual share of press releases is 77%. It is only normal, then, that the voices of officials become almost the only voices in the coverage instead of the voices of refugees and members of local communities, who do not have publicists or media spokespersons.

 

 

 

Since officials are steering the coverage, we find that in addition to the unilateral narrative, the vast majority of it is written in "promotional" language, specifically the news about services or grants provided to refugees or the host community.

 

In a news item about a Korean grant for building a school for the local and refugee communities in Irbid, the article neglects to say anything about the beneficiaries. It only commends the Korean role in supporting the communities affected by displacement and the Ministry of Education and its plans for education development.

 

Also, a news item about the visit by a representative of the UNHCR to get to see programs for helping refugees, in cooperation with another international commission for the relief of refugees, in one governorate, fails to provide any specific information about these programs. It only commends "the clear and distinguished efforts" of these two organisations in providing aid for refugees.

 

Similarly, a news item about a Saudi charitable association distributing school supplies to refugee children at Zaatari Refugee Camp does not mention anything about children. Instead, it only lists numbers of schoolbags and supplies that were distributed, and gives a detailed explanation of the humanitarian role this charity plays toward refugees.

 

The beneficiaries are usually absent from this kind of coverage, and hence we read (in case the coverage provided specific information, which is not the rule as we will see) a description of the delivered or planned services, time and mode, actual or expected numbers of beneficiaries, the role played by service providers, and their commitments and responsibilities, in addition to other "promotional information." On the other hand, the voices of beneficiaries remain absent. No one bothers to check facts on the ground or see if these services were indeed provided in the ideal manner described in the news that was written by the service provider itself.

 

The media coverage portrays refugees as a single mass, rather than individuals, and marginalizes their human suffering. Consequently, it fails to highlight the fact that they are victims. At the same time, it continues to complain about the burden associated with them and the pressure they create on services, such as health, education, drinking water, the labor market, etc. The articles that included direct complaints about the refugees being a burden accounted for 52% of the total coverage; this does not include the ones that conveyed the same message in an indirect way by portraying them as beneficiaries. The 52% we are talking about here is the percentage of news articles that described refugees plainly as a burden.

 

 

What is interesting about this coverage is that most of the complaints are not supported by evidence, and this is where the third principle of media coverage is violated:

 

Coverage of Syrian Refugees Is Not Based on Solid Facts

 

Most of this coverage either resembled composition pieces and lacked information, and this is true for most news items; or simply mentioned numbers or general statements, and lacked specific information that allows for understanding the actual impact of displacement on the ground in the various sectors. Let us take, for example, the coverage that establishes a link between Syrian refugees and the deterioration of services. If we exclude the items that only included general complaints about the burden resulting from hosting refugees and analyze the ones that link them to the deterioration of services in a certain sector, such as health, education, water, security, and others, we will find that out of these items (the sample included 40), there were four articles (10%) that included some sort of documented information, while the others did not, and the ones that provided any kind of information lacked accuracy and documentation.

 

For example, we found a report that stated that 60% of medications allotted to Mafraq are being given to the refugees in the governorate. The source mentioned in the report for this piece of information was the "patients" who reported to the health centers in the governorate. The headline of another report reads: "Syrian Refugees Capture 8,000 Job Opportunities." It does not explain where the mayor, who gave that statement, got this number from. In a third report, we read that refugees increased "the rates of poverty and unemployment among citizens," without citing any numbers to support this.

 

In addition to the above, there is a tendency to take facts out of context, especially when discussing the impact of refugee workers on the labor market. We found that articles that use words such as "dominate," "invasion," and "taking over" to describe the number of Syrian refugee workers in the local labor market make it look as though refugees were the only reason behind unemployment in the local labor force. It completely ignores, as a previous report in AKEED showed , a fact monitored by labor market studies, which is that imbalances in the Jordanian labor market preceded the arrival of Syrian refugees, and that these imbalances were the result of "selective economic policies implemented by the consecutive governments during the past two decades, especially those related to liberating prices and foreign trade, unfair tax policies, in addition to unplanned privatisation." This coverage neglects another fact, also proven by another study, which is that the main party hurt by refugee workers were other migrant workers, specifically the Egyptian labor force in Jordan.

 

Moreover, we found a tendency to take facts out of context in other stories that describe the impact of refugees on different sectors. For example, there was a news article about finding cases of tuberculosis among Syrian refugees. The article stated that the Ministry of Health discovered 40 new cases of tuberculosis, noting that "all of them are Syrian refugees." This phrasing suggests that the Ministry of Health had monitored the disease in general and that all the discovered cases were exclusively among Syrian refugees. However, the truth that the reader only realizes when reading about the same subject from another source is that all the cases were among Syrians because the Ministry had only monitored refugee communities.

 

The article, which relates in detail the numbers of refugees with tuberculosis over the years and the cost of their treatment, reaching in some cases 200,000 dinars, does not put these numbers in their general context, which is the incidence of tuberculosis in Jordan in general. It links this disease exclusively to the refugees.

 

While the news coverage continues to complain about the burdens resulting from the influx of refugees, it fails to mention their contribution to their new environment, which violates the fourth principle:

 

Coverage of Syrian Refugees Is Unfair

 

The sample did not include any reference at all to the positive impact of the presence of Syrian refugees, such as their contribution to the labor market and the stimulation of trade and the real estate market in the host communities. Here, we can only mention items that barely touched upon this issue in the daily press and electronic media, such as a report that discussed the impact of Zaatari Refugee Camp on the stimulation of trade and agriculture in the area. Another report discussed the impact of refugees on the stimulation of small and medium industries and trade in Mafraq, in addition to a third report about the impact of refugees on industrial investments.

 

How does this mode of coverage provoke feelings of hate?

 

We have seen how the media coverage marginalized the human identity of refugees and overlooked their individual stories, and how this obscured their suffering. This creates fertile ground, as we mentioned earlier, to nurturing feelings of hate that do not usually thrive in circles where people understand each other and are aware of each other"s suffering.  This is the role of the press; it should create a link between people and give them the opportunity to understand each other. This is what the coverage of Syrian refugees failed to do.

 

The coverage actually went a step further as it was not satisfied with obscuring the suffering of the "victim," but continued to complain about the burden resulting from accommodating them, and held them responsible for the deterioration of various sectors, which turned the victims into "offenders." This was made easier by the fact that the media coverage mostly failed to support this with solid facts, or to relate the facts in a manner that allows for the development of the minimum level of understanding of the impact of Syrian displacement on the various sectors.

 

A coverage that monitors the relationship between Syrian refugees and the deterioration of services in all sectors will provide, if based on specific and accurate information, an actual understanding of the real impact of Syrian refugees. It will also identify how they contributed to this deterioration, and how other factors, such as mismanagement of resources, bad planning and implementation--factors that Jordan has suffered from historically, even before refugees started flowing into the country--contributed to it. The flaws that are prevalent in Jordan now were there before the displacement of the Syrian people, but they were only accentuated with the refugees" arrival.

 

An accurate and fact-based coverage would have drawn the attention of the public to international and local policymakers and implementers who are managing this file. It would have also allowed for identifying their share of responsibility for the prevalent flaws, but that has not happened. The coverage that is solely narrated, as we saw, by policymakers and implementers, and the lack of facts therein, has focused attention instead on the victims, not to highlight their suffering, but to pin the blame on them, stimulate feelings of hostility toward them, and put them on a collision course with the host communities, the other victims.

 

Table (1): Share of coverage of refugees out of the total coverage of each newspaper

 

Newspaper	Syrian Refugees Out of Total Local Coverage
	Total Local Coverage	Share of Syrian Refugees in the Coverage
		Number	%
Al Dustour	1415	81	5.72
Al Rai	1327	43	3.24
Al Ghad	1254	58	4.62
Al Sabeel	556	22	3.95
Total	4552	204	4.48

 

Table (2): Share of coverage of Syrian refugees out of press items that had a reference to Syrian refugees

 

Newspaper	Total Coverage of Syrian Refugees	Share of Syrian Refugees in Press Items
		Entire Item		Part of It
		Number	%	Number	%
Al Dustour	81	33	40.74	48	59.26
Al Rai	43	23	53.48	20	46.52
Al Ghad	58	32	55.17	26	44.82
Al Sabeel	22	15	68.18	7	31.81
Total	204	103	50.49	101	49.5

 

Table 3: Image of refugees in coverage

 

No.	Newspaper	Total coverage of Syrian refugees	Single Mass				Absence of humans in coverage of Syrian refugees or Syrian crisis			Individual or human stories		Other
			Refugees		Refugee children, youth, women; displaced elderly; sibling students
			Number	%	Number	%		Number	%	Number	%	Number	%
1	Al Dustour	81	65	80.24	11	13.58		4	4.93	-	-	1	1.23
2	Al Rai	43	25	58.13	12	27.9		4	9.3	1	2.3	1	2.32
3	Al Ghad	58	42	72.4	9	15.5		1	1.72	4	6.89	2	3.44
4	Al Sabeel	22	14	63.63	4	18.18		2	9.09	1	4.54	1	4.54
	Total	204	146	71.56	36	17.6		11	5.39	6	2.94	5	2.45

 

Table (4): Voices appearing in coverage (one story could include more than one voice)

 

Newspaper	Number of stories on Syrian refugees	Local and official, foreign and international		CSOs		NGOs		Local community members		Refugees		Parliamentarians		Other
Al Dustour	81	81	100	6	7.4	7	8.64	3	3.7	-	-	7	8.64	6	7..3
Al Rai	43	39	90.69	4	9.3	4	9.3	1	2.3	3	6.97	5	11.62	1	2.3
Al Ghad	58	58	100	5	8.62	-	-	4	6.89	4	6.89	3	5.17	5	8.62
Al Sabeel	22	19	86.36	5	22.7	-	-	5	22.72	1	4.54	-	-	1	4.54
Total	204	197	96.5	22	10.78	11	11	13	6.37	8	3.92	158.64	7.35	11	5.39

 

Table (5): News Sources

Newspaper	Number of stories about Syrian refugees	Stories written by media outlet"s own journalists		Petra		Press Release		Other Media
		Number	%	Number	%	Number	%	Number	%
Al Dustour	81	10	12.3	54	66.7	17	21	-	-
Al Rai	43	8	18.6	29	67.44	4	9.3	2	4.65
Al Ghad	58	17	29.3	37	63.8	4	6.9	-	-
Al Sabeel	22	7	31.8	12	54.54	1	4.54	2	9
Total	204	42	20.58	132	64.7	26	12.74	4	1.96

 

_{[1] The sample was taken using the "artificial week" approach.  We chose the first Sunday of January 2015, the second Monday of February 2015, the third Tuesday of March 2015, the fourth Wednesday of April 2015, the first Thursday of May 2015, the second Friday of June 2015, and so on and so forth until we reached 13 February 2016, and had a sample that consists of 14 days.}