According to an opinion poll conducted by the Institute "Runnymede Trust" following a request by The Independent, 78 per cent of the British respondents of all ethnicities believe that the British press encourages discrimination through the approach of issues related to minority groups. The survey was conducted on a representative sample for the ethnic diversity in the UK, but the concerns about the impact of media coverage exists among the whites in the UK too.
"The poll’s findings coincide with the intense media coverage of the alleged coming to the UK of new immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria after the labour restrictions were lifted on January 1. Among Eastern European respondents, 89 percent of them believe that the media approach contributes to increased racism because they represent the ethnic group most affected about these trends after the Pakistani community "(94 percent), says the Independent.
In this context, the voices of the Labourers opposition requested the notification of the Office Communications (Ofcom), the government body responsible for overseeing broadcasting and telecommunications, including online media.
A special case is that of the TV station Channel 4, who has decided to dedicate the next episode of the series-documentary " Benefits Street " ("Street of social benefits") to Eastern European immigrants suspected of abusing the generous social benefits system. The future of the controversial episode series that has already attracted hundreds of complaints to Ofcom contains a scene on Romanian immigrants that invade James Turner Street in the city of Birmingham, followed by nomads in carts.
"It is the responsibility of Ofcom to ensure that media organizations present information materials in a balanced way, but where there appear racist tendencies, it is clear that this criterion is not met," responded Helen Goodman, Minister of Culture in the Shadow Cabinet, formed by the Labour opposition. In one of the documentary’s scenes, one of the characters, Fungi, calls out to the immigrants portrayed as Romanian " They do not even speak English!" the he addresses Gypsies in the carts: "I will burn you, you bloody idiots!"
After the first episode of the documentary series "Benefits Street", the regulator Ofcom received more than 300 complaints related to the alleged presentation in a negative context of the recipients of social benefits.
The TV station Channel 4 said that the series "meets the function of simply observing social reality".