Media slammed over treatment of foreigners

THE media ethics committee has slammed the way the media deals with foreigners’ deaths, raising issues of “adverse discrimination”.

The committee decided to issue an announcement this week following a complaint it received about the way the media covered the death of a young man from Moldova last December in a car accident in Nicosia.

“The victim’s identity was determined solely by his national descent and he was repeatedly referred to as ‘the foreigner’,” said the committee.

The complaint, it added, said this was blatant discrimination against non-Cypriots, making them seem like “second-class citizens”.

“The committee has indeed noticed, through personal experience of its members, that the media – when referring to accidents that involve foreigners – determine (the victims’) identity by either referring to their national origin or simply their status as foreigners,” said the committee. Furthermore, accidents with foreign victims are often downgraded in the media. It said.

“This practice tends to project that persons who aren’t Cypriots are inferior and that their lives do not have the same value as those of Cypriots,” the committee stressed.

“Making these points, the committee is calling on all media outlets and journalists to act based on the journalist ethic code when dealing with matters involving foreigners,” it added.

The code underlines, among others, the media’s obligation to avoid “any direct or other reference or action against a person, which contains elements of bias based on race, colour, language, religion, political or other beliefs, social or national origin”.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.