The Roma story is a complex and fascinating one. It's about the traditions, cultures and languages of a people who travelled many hundreds of years ago from northern India and made their homes in Europe where they are better known as travellers or gypsies.
Today Roma are much less engaged in the nomadic lifestyle of earlier generations; they live within a specific cultural space in a Europe of diverse peoples and, like everyone else, they aspire to jobs, security and a decent future for their kids.
The problem is that this side of the Roma story is rarely if ever told by European media. Across the continent Roma are a community targeted by unscrupulous politicians and biased journalists who together generate a dangerous and racist cocktail of intolerance that paints a very different picture of Roma.
Roma have been victimised by right-wing extremists for generations. They have been the resident scapegoats for social ills in Europe for a century or more.The Nazis targeted them for extermination.
Today the attacks are more subtle, but potentially just as lethal. Roma communities are regularly portrayed in media as feckless, criminal, and anti-social. Anti-Roma campaigns are often initiated by irresponsible journalists who don't check their facts and accept without question the intemperate claims of bigoted politicians. All of the available evidence shows that the Roma, Europe's largest ethinic minority, are the community most vulnerable to policies that lead to poverty, social dislocation and inequality. But it's evidence that rarely shows up in newspaper reports.
Anti-Roma sentiment has been fomented in recent years by politicians like Nicolas Sarkozy and Silvio Berlusconi whose barely disguised racism in their treatment of migrants and Europeans crossing borders to find work has been taken up by populist and irresponsible media. They target Roma communities in their own countries for deportation and they have now put the idea of a borderless Europe on notice by demanding changes in the Shengen rules on freedom of movement between EU countries.
The media role in this has been woeful. In France, Italy and the UK tabloid newspapers run sensational tales of Roma mischief while failing to provide any context or useful background that will allay people's fears by providing them with reliable fact-based reporting about the social realities of the crisis in Europe.
Current discussion within media about the need for higher ethical standards and the need for journalism "as a public good" are welcome, because they point the way towards rebuilding public confidence in media and in responsible use of information. The Internet, for instance, is full of hate-filled rhetoric that has encouraged a revival in the vote of racists and extremists and this can only be countered by value-based journalism.
Media should make a start by exposing the injustice and the political hypocrisy at work around then treatment of migrants and Roma. Increasingly, race hatred is part of the mainstream political narrative in South East Europe and even in the heartllands of European democracy and journalists worthy of the name need to wake up to the dangers of sterotyping gypsies, travellers and Roma.
Today Roma are much less engaged in the nomadic lifestyle of earlier generations; they live within a specific cultural space in a Europe of diverse peoples and, like everyone else, they aspire to jobs, security and a decent future for their kids.
The problem is that this side of the Roma story is rarely if ever told by European media. Across the continent Roma are a community targeted by unscrupulous politicians and biased journalists who together generate a dangerous and racist cocktail of intolerance that paints a very different picture of Roma.
Roma have been victimised by right-wing extremists for generations. They have been the resident scapegoats for social ills in Europe for a century or more.The Nazis targeted them for extermination.
Today the attacks are more subtle, but potentially just as lethal. Roma communities are regularly portrayed in media as feckless, criminal, and anti-social. Anti-Roma campaigns are often initiated by irresponsible journalists who don't check their facts and accept without question the intemperate claims of bigoted politicians. All of the available evidence shows that the Roma, Europe's largest ethinic minority, are the community most vulnerable to policies that lead to poverty, social dislocation and inequality. But it's evidence that rarely shows up in newspaper reports.
Anti-Roma sentiment has been fomented in recent years by politicians like Nicolas Sarkozy and Silvio Berlusconi whose barely disguised racism in their treatment of migrants and Europeans crossing borders to find work has been taken up by populist and irresponsible media. They target Roma communities in their own countries for deportation and they have now put the idea of a borderless Europe on notice by demanding changes in the Shengen rules on freedom of movement between EU countries.
The media role in this has been woeful. In France, Italy and the UK tabloid newspapers run sensational tales of Roma mischief while failing to provide any context or useful background that will allay people's fears by providing them with reliable fact-based reporting about the social realities of the crisis in Europe.
Current discussion within media about the need for higher ethical standards and the need for journalism "as a public good" are welcome, because they point the way towards rebuilding public confidence in media and in responsible use of information. The Internet, for instance, is full of hate-filled rhetoric that has encouraged a revival in the vote of racists and extremists and this can only be countered by value-based journalism.
Media should make a start by exposing the injustice and the political hypocrisy at work around then treatment of migrants and Roma. Increasingly, race hatred is part of the mainstream political narrative in South East Europe and even in the heartllands of European democracy and journalists worthy of the name need to wake up to the dangers of sterotyping gypsies, travellers and Roma.
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