This chapter summarises the results of two studies by the Media Group on the profile of ethnic minority groups on television. It examines the presentation of TV programmes according to who is employed as the 'public face' of television, as well as the roles of ethnic minorities in television advertising.
Race, Migration and Media (Liza Beattie and Greg Philo)
What is absent from these television reports is any consideration of migration from the point of view of the migrant, legal or illegal. Many such people work under conditions of exploitation, with long hours, often doing jobs which the indigenous workforce shuns. Without them the cost of many products would increase. Neither does the news develop the issue of what conditions cause migrants to leave their homes and families to move to foreign lands. The news could ask if such movement is temporary, for economic reasons, and how migrants contribute to the economies that they have joined. If they move for economic reasons, what could be done to alleviate this situation at source by stimulating national development in order to prevent poverty? These reports do not consider the role of Western trade and Western economies in producing the global imbalance in development. The issues prioritised on the news are debate over the 'threat' which illegal migrants pose, and how they can be kept out.