Katie Hopkins and the drowned refugeesWednesday 22 April, 2015
On April 16 last year Guy Garvey stood on the outpost stage of the O2 and told 17,000 people what he thought about people who set out in flimsy boats to seek a new life in a strange land. On April 16 this year the Sun went to press with an article in which Katie Hopkins shared her opinion on the boat people with 13 million readers. Neither showed restraint in their language. For Garvey it was an expletive-not-deleted insult to our intelligence to suggest that desperate people risked everything to come and steal our gold. For Hopkins, those desperate people were feral human beings, cockroaches designed to survive a nuclear bomb (though not the Mediterranean). Garvey was explaining the background to the final song on Elbow's latest album. It was a powerful introduction; powerful enough for the words to stick with SubScribe for a year and return to mind this week . His anger was directed at politicians, but he doubtless has enough contempt to spare some for Hopkins and her contribution to the debate. 
The outrage at her Sun column was instant and widespread. More than 200,000 people have signed a change.org petition urging David Dinsmore to sack her, more than 100 people have complained to Ipso.
There has been no official response from the Baby Shard, but coverage has been expanded, Jane Moore's column took a more considered stance and the readers have their say on today's letters page, which carries the views of 11 readers. It is impossible to know whether the choice of letters for publication reflects the balance of reader opinion, but the thrust of those that make it into print can be gleaned from the heading "Katie tells it straight on immigrants". Only three disagree with her. Alan Carrington of Wickford has a charming turn of phrase: 
Well done, Katie Hopkins, for saying it how it is. Sun readers who depend on the paper for their news might have been bemused by the Hopkins piece, since its only coverage of the tragedy to which she was referring came as a little single at the top of page 20 the previous Wednesday. It told the story of a migrant's body being thrown to the sharks after he choked on petrol fumes in a cramped boat. There was no mention of 400 people drowning.
The Libyan boat had sunk on Sunday and even the Guardian didn't pick up on the story until Thursday. The Express didn't report it at all. 
The Times, however, had been ahead of the game, running a picture story on the front and more on its opening foreign spread on Tuesday.
Rome correspondent Tom Kington reported that 6,000 people had been emboldened by fine weather to set off from North Africa in dozens of boats. One with hundreds on board had capsized 80 miles off Libya, and 14 rescue missions were under way simultaneously. Coastguards, merchant ships and tax police were mustered in what Kington called the first big test since Italy scrapped its Mare Nostrum naval force last November. 
The Times centre spread, April 14
Disasters at sea are commonplace, particularly off the Indian sub-continent and in the Far East, so death tolls generally need to reach four figures before our newspapers show much interest.
But this wasn't happening on the other side of the world, these people were drowning in the Mediterranean. Not only that, the victims were migrants trying to reach Europe - one of the key issues in the election campaign. How could the other papers have missed the story? The Mail and Independent caught up on Wednesday, each giving the story a page lead. The Mirror made it a top brief and the Telegraph took the same line as the Sun with "Migrant's body fed to sharks as latest death toll in the Med reaches 400". An interesting approach - both in the gruesome description of the accepted practice of throwing a corpse overboard and in the use of "latest" in the heading, falsely suggesting that it had previously reported the tragedy. 
Daily Telegraph April 15, 16, 17 and 18
Indeed, the Telegraph's reporting all last week (cuttings above) was sparse and nasty, with no attempt to examine the phenomenon of people fleeing Libya and Syria and the unstable societies that the West helped to create.
The Mail, Independent and Guardian expanded their coverage on Thursday and Friday, although they still couldn't match the Times, which has been outstanding throughout. It was not only first off the mark, but it hasn't faltered since; never demoting it from the front or World lead. And then Katie Hopkins blundered into the firing line. Europe should, she wrote, "get Australian" and use gunships to deter the migrants from setting sail. She later explained on her LBC programme that she meant the warships should tow the refugee boats back to where they came from, not fire on them. Pity she didn't write that in the first place. 
The Independent, pages 4-5, April 21
The outrage that followed her column and another, greater, tragedy combined to push the story up everyone's news list. Seven, eight or nine hundred people drowned, depending on which paper you read. Emergency summits were convened, the EU, UN, charities and OpEd writers all had something to say.
Drowning refugees who a week earlier had been worthy of no more than a foreign short were promoted to page one and the early spreads.Such was the momentum that the deaths of three people off Rhodes dominated several front pages yesterday; only the Mail had no mention of them on page 1. The surge in interest may have been mostly because the story was getting bigger, but the reviled Hopkins had also played her part. Her vitriol had brought the issue to a far wider - and more compassionate - audience. 
The Guardian, page 4-5, April 21
Had I been editing her copy I'd have removed the cockroaches, but that petition is a worrying attempt to curb free speech. A woman paid to express opinions expresses an opinion that most of us despise. So what? Harridan journalism has been with us for decades, although today's Glenda Slaggs are obliged to be more offensive than the Jean Rook/Lynda Lee-Potter prototype.
Hopkins may believe that she speaks for most ordinary people. She doesn't. People won't suddenly see boat people as invaders or make migrants' lives more miserable as a result of her column. Some people may discuss the issues where they wouldn't before. Is that bad? But the only group Hopkins has really influenced is the Press, which has been stirred from its torpor to see the importance of this story, both as a humanitarian disaster and for its political significance. 
Australian government advertising campaign to deter boat people
So while we're sitting up and paying attention, let's look at the "get Australian" idea. Tony Abbott has kindly told Europe what it should be doing, so it's worth examining his government's Operation Sovereign Borders, a policy credited with almost halting the boats full of people trying to reach Australia from Sri Lanka, Indonesia and other parts of the Pacific region.
For 15 months until December, the policy was in the hands of Scott Morrison, described by Abbott as an extremely decent human being (he is now social services minister). Borrowing the Apprentice farewell formula for the benefit of reality TV contestant Hopkins, here are some of Morrison's highlights:
Europe clearly has much to learn from the Australians. So I say "thank you" to Katie Hopkins for making us sit up and think about the treatment of the boat people and "thank you" for the law of unintended consequences that means we are able to do so with greater insight than we might otherwise have done. |
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How the tabloids covered the story
The Sun
April 15, page 20
April 20, page 9
April 21, pages 10-11
April 22, page 6
April 22
Daily Mail
April 15, page 2
April 16, page 34
April 17: page 36
April 20: page 8
April 21: pages 14-15
April 22: page 6
Daily Mirror
April 15: page 12
April 16, page 9
April 20, page 11
April 21, pages 12-13
April 22, page 11
Daily Express
April 20, page 4
April 21, page 5
April 22, page 5
April 21, page 12
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How the 'broadsheets' covered the story
The Times
April 15, page 28 (for April 14 see main text)
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April 16, pages 28-29
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April 17, page 32
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April 18, pages 36-37
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April 20, page 1
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April 20, page 30
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April 21, page 1
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April 21, pages 32-33
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April 22, pages 1, 2, 24 and 29
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The Independent
April 15, page 26
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April 16, pages 26-27
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April 20, page 1. For inside spread, see main text
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April 21, page 1
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April 21, pages 4-5
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April 21, pages 6-7
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April 22, page 1
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April 22, pages 24-25
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The Guardian
April 16, page 19
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April 17, page 25
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April 18, page 17
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April 20, page 1
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April 20, pages 4-5
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April 21, page 1
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April 21, page 35. For inside news spread, see main text
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April 22, page 15
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Daily Telegraph
April 20, page 1. For last week's coverage, see main text
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April 20, pages 12-13
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April 21, page 1
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April 21, pages 2-3
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April 22, pages 12-13
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Footnote: Guy Garvey's little speech at the O2 and his song Blanket of the Night were about people putting their lives in the hands of the sea. He is unlikely to have known as he spoke that 300 people had died that very day when their boat sank.
The vessel was not some little fishing smack overcrowded with migrants, but a ferry carrying twice its legal cargo weight - and hundreds of South Korean children on a school trip.
A year on, there are hopes that the Sewol may be raised and the last bodies recovered.
The vessel was not some little fishing smack overcrowded with migrants, but a ferry carrying twice its legal cargo weight - and hundreds of South Korean children on a school trip.
A year on, there are hopes that the Sewol may be raised and the last bodies recovered.
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