Ukraine coverage exposes racial bias in media

The fast-paced, unpredictable nature of war and conflict makes journalistic coverage of unfolding events pressurised and unpredictable.

However, while media outlets largely agree on the events themselves, they have inadvertently revealed an institutional, social and cultural bias towards refugees, asylum and the victims and casualties of war.

Writers, correspondents and broadcasters have used troubling language and revealed an international sentiment that arguable represents racial bias towards coverage of the conflict.

When referring to the region and Ukranian people:

This is a relatively civilised, relatively European city.

CBS News 

These are prosperous, middle-class people. These are not obviously refugees trying to get away from the Middle East…or North Africa.

Al-Jazeera 

We are in the 21st Century…and we have cruise missile fire as though we were in Iraq or Afghanistan, can you imagine?

BFM TV

They seem so like us. That is what makes it so shocking.

The Telegraph

The unthinkable has happened – this is not a developing, third world nation: this is Europe!

ITV News

Coverage of conflict in Middle East and African regions usually focus on purely factual questioning, geopolitical tensions and abstract outcomes. Refugees are a discarded as an unsurprising ‘crisis’.

But the Russia-Ukraine conflict has generated an emotively biased empathetic outcry, as if the realisation has suddenly occurred that war and conflict can happen everywhere, to anyone. That a well-dressed outfit, blonde hair and blue eyes cannot shield against the implications of conflict and casualty – while simultaneously pushing the narrative that it should. That war ought to be confined to “uncivilised, impoverished” regions only.

But just as it doesn’t care about its victims, their class, their colour or their country, neither should journalists who have a responsibility to cover the news in line with the ethical standards of reporting.

A full Twitter thread that has collected further examples of journalistic bias can be read here.