An Intro to Refugee-Tripping & Media Ethics

By Anthony Mills

Back in September, a Hungarian camerawoman was filmed apparently deliberately kicking two young refugees before tripping a Syrian refugee father holding his child as he ran near the Hungarian border with Serbia.

Petra Laszlo was subsequently fired from her job with N1TV, a Hungarian broadcaster with links to the far-right Jobbik party.

Laszlo initially apologised, saying “something snapped in me”, but also portrayed herself as a victim.

“I’m not a heartless, racist, children-kicking camerawoman,” she stated in a letter to Magyar Nemzet, a Hungarian newspaper, Britain’s The Daily Telegraph reported. “I do not deserve the political witch-hunts against me, nor the smears or the death threats … I’m just an unemployed mother of small children, who made a bad decision. I am truly sorry.”

In a more recent development, Laszlo said she intended to sue the father, who was offered a football coaching job at a Spanish academy after the incident, for allegedly changing his testimony, and Facebook for allegedly not taking down threatening posts in the aftermath of the act, when she was widely criticised.

In her statement to the newspaper, Laszlo unwittingly raises a valid point: that journalists are human too, and subject to human swings of emotion and subjectivity. However, that subjectivity should never cross the line into criminal behaviour. And from a journalism ethics point of view it should not sway the balance and accuracy that should underpin reporting.

The tripping of the child-carrying refugee father was a particularly egregious and widely-viewed example of a journalist divesting herself of the journalist’s mantle –which is why it made headlines around the world, and sparked a vehemently critical backlash, in Hungary too. It didn’t help that Laszlo worked for a media outlet with ties to a far-right party, or that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been accused of undermining independent journalism in Hungary since he came to power again six years or so ago.

But it’s by no means the only example of journalists fanning flames in the cauldron of emotions, fears and rhetoric that is the refugee crisis.

Only recently, Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper ran a cartoon of refugees entering the European Union with rats at their feet. Defenders of the cartoon said the rats depicted not refuges but the terrorists slipping into Europe with them. Detractors argued that there is a long history of refugees being associated with vermin in a deliberate attempt to dehumanise them. Either way, the cartoon, while certainly not criminal, was incendiary.

Every time journalists work on a story they have a responsibility to uphold the ethics of the profession. In that respect, the refugee crisis is no different. However, because of the politicised nature of the debate about the refugee crisis, as well as the dangers of opposition to the influx of refugees spilling over into criminal acts, the media holds a particular responsibility to draw a line between fully justified thought-provocation and incitement. Moreover, anyone who commits a criminal act is a criminal – whether or not they are a journalist.

Follow Anthony Mills on Twitter: @AAMills