Is the media underequipped to cover migration? This was the question investigated in the study on 17 countries in the Euro-Mediterranean region. It identifies major challenges to migration reporting and finds that media in many countries on both sides of the Mediterranean are under-resourced and unable to provide the time, money and appropriate level of expertise that is needed to tell the migration story in context.

EUROMED Migration IV, funded by the Directorate General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations of the EU  and implemented by ICMPD, commissioned the Ethical Journalism Network  to conduct this study for which journalists from 17 countries have examined the quality of migration media coverage in 2015/16 from a national perspective. The study covers nine EU countries and eight countries in the south of the Mediterranean.

It finds that journalists are often poorly informed about the complex nature of migration as a phenomenon. At the same time newsrooms are also vulnerable to pressure, manipulation and hate speech by some political elites or voices on social media networks. The study also highlights inspirational examples of journalism at its best –resourceful, painstaking, and marked by careful, sensitive and humanitarian reporting. In order to address the identified challenges it  provides a series of detailed recommendations and calls for training, better funding of media action and other activities to support and foster more balanced and fact-based journalism on immigration, emigration, integration, asylum and other migration-related challenges.

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