The president of the EFE Agency, Miguel Ángel Oliver, said on Tuesday that the EFE Agency is “an antidote against racism” during the presentation of the New Urgent Style Manual at the headquarters of the Cervantes Institute of Rabat.

“EFE, through the new book, is an antidote against racism. When immigrants are rejected for ethnic or social reasons, it is simply racism,” Oliver stressed when closing a round table entitled “The debate on immigration in the media: when the story kills the data.”

Oliver recalled that journalists have the duty to tell the stories of emigrants and to fight that hate speech against these people: “Put names to the drama, faces and voices,” he insisted.

He stressed that there are media that work against this hate speech. In this sense, he pointed out that media such as EFE and RTVE “are an example of responsible treatment of migration information.”

It is important to humanize the stories of migrants

On this issue, the Moroccan and Spanish journalists who participated in the round table agreed on the need to humanize the stories of migrants, give them a voice without entering into controversy, and avoid degrading language.

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During the debate, the speakers stressed the need not to neglect the personal stories of each migrant, and not to limit themselves to providing figures of people who tried to cross into Europe.

“Journalists must be on the side of the marginalized who will never make it to the news. The journalist has to be critical of governments. Behind thousands of people crossing, you have to spend time telling the story of Pepe, Fátima…”, said Ana Jiménez, TVE correspondent in Morocco.

The Spanish journalist stressed that the data is forgotten but the personal stories or shocking images, such as that of Luna hugging the migrant Abdou, who went viral during the massive entry of emigrants into the Spanish city of Ceuta in May 2021, reach the consciousness of the viewers.

The EFE Agency’s manual to cover migration issues

One of the points on which the speakers insisted is that of the words used to cover migration issues or to refer to migrants.

Jiménez acknowledged that he learned, thanks to style books – such as EFE – or the work of NGOs to differentiate between “jump” and “assault”: the latter term is usually used in the media to refer to the attempt of migrants to jump the border fence of Ceuta or Melilla but it is a word that is associated with weapons, which migrants do not carry.

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In the same sense, Mohamed Ezzouak, director of the Moroccan electronic newspaper ‘Yabiladi’ – which gives special importance to the issues of the Moroccan diaspora abroad – recognized that because of the words we sometimes “animalize” the migrant using degrading words.

Ezzouak recalled some episodes in the past in the Moroccan press where sub-Saharan migrants were labeled “black plague” or even “cockroaches.”

“But the Moroccan media criticized this coverage,” said the journalist, who stressed that these are isolated situations in which it does not reflect the temperament of a country, where there is no polemical debate about emigration, unlike countries like Spain or France.

The correct terms must be used

In the same sense, Ghita Ismaili, journalist of the Moroccan weekly in French ‘Telquel’, stressed the difference between Spain and France, where “emigration is a daily issue” and where there is a political debate animated by the right and extreme right, a point in which he has cited Vox.

“When we refer to emigration in the Moroccan media it is done differently, emigration is very factual, there are not many comments, and the news is more about rescues made by the country’s authorities and the Royal Navy,” he said.

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Ismaili recalled that the last time there was debate and the news of migrants monopolized the front pages of the media was after the call for the mass crossing to Ceuta on September 15, which went viral on social networks and led about 3,000 people, mostly Moroccans, to try.

The new EFE Style Book, whose first edition was published in 2011, has a different structure, reviews and rewrites much of its material and incorporates a multitude of aspects that have appeared or gained importance in recent years in the newsrooms of EFE and all media, such as social networks or artificial intelligence.

The coordinator of the guide, Javier Lascuráin, explained during the round table that the work includes the ethical, professional and linguistic principles of the public agency and broke down some of the considerations that are included in the treatment of migration: avoid pejorative terms such as “avalanche” or “mena”, give voice to migrants, among others.