Over the past week a lot has been said about the success of the far-right Front National at the French regional elections, while the reaction to Donald Trump’s increasingly discriminatory tone has, rightly, been one mostly of disgust.

We are right to stand up to the Le Pens and Trumps of this world. When they splutter remarks that are incendiary and false, we have a responsibility to correct their inaccuracies.

The reasons why the ideas of the Front National take hold are plentiful and complicated. There is no single simple explanation.

However, there can be no doubt that misinformation does not help – and we in the media should feel a professional and moral obligation to confront our own industry when it misleads.

The front page of Thursday’s Times of London splashed: “EU buckles as Merkel’s migrants hit 1 million.”

The headline topped an article about comments made by the UK prime minister, David Cameron, who said that net migration of 300,000 a year was not sustainable in Britain. The piece also referenced demands that Cameron is making to other European leaders to apply restrictions to EU nationals’ access to UK’s welfare.

The Times story pieces together different stories and conflates a range of issues. The result is a distasteful minestrone.

First, the one million figure refers to the number of asylum seekers that have arrived in Germany so far this year. The majority of these are from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. They are refugees fleeing wars.

Second, whatever one thinks of Britain’s level of migration - whether it is too high or not is besides the point - the number has little to do with refugees. The UK hardly takes any refugees. In fact fewer than 5% of migrants to Britain over the past year were asylum seekers.

Third, we can state with certainty that refugees escaping conflict are not doing so to claim in-work tax credits.

Fourth, the migrants are Angela Merkel’s only insofar as Germany is one of a handful of countries that is welcoming refugees instead of putting up fences, turning the other way, or, like Britain, taking in pitifully low numbers.

The problem with the article is more than just a question of interpretation or of cavalier use of terms. Facts without humanity are meaningless.

The choice of words we use matters and carries consequences. Behind the use of words like “migrant”, “refugee”, “asylum seeker”, “people”, “swarms” and “floods”, there is powerful symbolism.

When terms used for people fleeing war, violence and atrocities, or those used for people moving in search of work, or a better life, become pejorative and generate antipathy, we have a problem. We are choosing not to unite around a shared purpose, but to drive a wedge through society. We are taking an us v them view on the world.

There are grave risks when the perception of an issue and facts do not align. It doesn’t matter if the misalignment creates the idea of a country that isn’t grounded in reality – when untruths are repeated often enough they generate fear among people. In turn this defines and drives behaviour.

Consider these facts:

The Times of course is not alone. Nearly every day we read headlines about the true toll of mass migration on UK life, the crisis in our schools, the swarms on our streets, migrants stealing our jobs, draining the NHS and fuelling a surge in crime – all actual headlines.



Last week a journalist fabricated a tale in order to be able to claim that he had travelled along a refugee route without a passport. This is how far we have come.

The same newspaper that carried that particular story (for which it has apologised), had only weeks earlier controversially led with “1 in 5 Brit Muslim’s sympathy for jihadis”.

The point is this: the likes of Le Pen and Trump are not a product of the media. However, too often the media provides them with the ammunition and fertile ground that they require to thrive.

Don’t take my word for it. Take Trump’s:

Thank you to respected columnist Katie Hopkins of Daily https://t.co/LgtY0qdv9U for her powerful writing on the U.K.'s Muslim problems. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 10, 2015

During a trip to Europe in the 1930s a young John F Kennedy wrote a letter to a friend. In it he said: “It seems so easy to fall into a distorted view of public affairs based more on personal bias than on informed understanding.”



The challenge we face is not new. But it is one that remains not only critical, it is one we have mostly failed to meet.

If we want to confront the Le Pens and Trumps of this world then we need to change the way we talk about the people that they vilify.