Between Detachment and Engagement: Paradoxes in Reproting about the “Refugee Crisis” in Daily Press

The paper analyses reporting about the “refugee crisis” in Slovenia's three main daily newspapers Delo, Dnevnik and Večer in the first weeks of mass migrations through the country that were named “the first and the second wave of refugees” by the journalists. The analysis focuses on the question of framing and on the dominant journalistic conventions through which objectivity is performed. The paper tries to reflect on the paradox in reporting these issues where the problem is dominantly framed in terms of humanitarian crisis on the explicit level and rarely as a security issue but on the connotative level factism and episodic framing suggest another reading of the problem that supports the fear of the imigrants. What is more, examples of more engaged reporting can be found where archetypal figures of heroes are called upon and where daily news functions similar as myth. 
KEY WORDS: refugee crisis, migrations, journalistic conventions, quality press, objectivity, factism

SUMMARY

The paper analyses reporting about the “refugee crisis” in Slovenia’s three main daily newspapers Delo, Dnevnik and Večer in the first weeks of mass migrations through the country that were named »the first and the second wave of refugees« by the journalists. The analysis focuses on the question of framing and on the dominant journalistic conventions through which objectivity is performed. The paper tries to reflect on the paradox in reporting these issues where the problem is dominantly framed in terms of humanitarian crisis on the explicit level and rarely as a security issue but on the connotative level factism and episodic framing suggest another reading of the problem that supports the fear of the immigrants. While comparative studies highlight number of frames in news reports about immigration, in the present study the ideological focus is extremely narrow although not explicitly negative. A complete lack of discussions about immigration policy on national level is brought to fore as problematic, considerations of cultural diversity are also missing in the analysed examples. What is more, cases of more engaged reporting can be found where archetypal figures of heroes are called upon and where daily news functions similar as myth, reinforcing the status quo. In the conclusion the importance of these discourses on the perception of public policy is emphasized and reception studies of these and similar texts about refugees is suggested as an useful point for further analysis.