 On Friday's show, we spoke about the conveyor belt that transports migrant bashing from Nigel Farage's Twitter feed to our Tory government via right-wing talk show hosts and tabloid front pages. The BBC have now got in on this dehumanising act. So on BBC Breakfast this morning, that took the form of live commentary of an overcrowded boat carrying people seeking asylum to Dover. Let's take a look. Yeah, you can see why it's dangerous today because the sea is pretty choppy and then we came across this boat around half an hour ago just spotted it on the horizon and we have seen them actually trying to get water out the boat. They're doing that at the moment. They're using a plastic container just to try to bail out the boat. So obviously it's pretty overloaded there. People are wearing life jackets but it is pretty dangerous just the number of people on board that boat. Let me just see. Are you okay? Are you all right? Okay. Okay. Where are you from? Syria. How many people? How many? So they say they're from Syria. They say they're okay. I can see there are some women on board that boat as well. Majority men. Majority men. Where are you going? Where do you want to go? Their destination is Dover obviously. So at the moment they're motoring through the channel. At the moment the boat seems to be safe. The engine seems to be going. When we were out on the channel on Friday the boat we were following actually got very close to the white cliffs before it actually broke down. The engine broke down but at the moment pretty choppy out there. They are bailing the boat out from time to time but they seem to be safe at the moment. But obviously the Coast Guard has been alerted and they will be on their way. But this is a site that is becoming increasingly common in the channel. We heard from the Coast Guard that a boat had set out early this morning but no one was quite sure where it was. But then shipping was asked to look out for it and then suddenly we spotted it. Often you can spot them from the life jackets. From the colour of the life jackets makes it clear in the distance. But certainly at the moment this boat is heading towards Dover and so we'll shadow it and just see how the situation develops. Now one extraordinarily dystopian piece of television. So he's not there giving any context as to why these people might be risking their lives crossing the channel. There's no story about the fact that these people could well be fleeing war and persecution. It's kind of half nature program, half sports event. And it's just such an odd dehumanizing form of journalism. Why is this even a live news story? I can imagine this being an interesting feature but the idea that we should be doing live coverage of a few hundred people seeking a better life, desperate people seeking asylum. For us to cover that like a sports event I think is especially from our public broadcaster just in human. I mean you had it bang on the money when you said that this was dehumanizing coverage of desperate people in dangerous waters on a dinghy where they're having to bail out water with a plastic bucket. There's a real risk to their lives here. And this BBC journalist is covering it in a completely content and context free way. And I think you've got to look at where that comes from because while Nigel Farage having a direct conveyor belt through right wing media outlets through to the BBC and through right wing talk show hosts right to the Conservative Party is a contemporary thing. The breathlessness of this kind of coverage and its orchestration isn't new at all. So when David Blunkett was home secretary, you might remember, I mean this was when I was quite young but I remember it very well, there became this public obsession with bogus asylum seekers. And this was in a way where you thought that at first it was an opposition between the new Labour government and the right wing papers in particular at the time it was the sun and the news of the world. There was a kind of increase, you know, a flurry of activity that coverage was heating up from these right wing tabloids. And then you had David Blunkett writing an editorial in one of these papers vowing a new Labour crackdown. And then it transpired that all of this was coordinated. It was an opportunity for new Labour to look like it was being tough on asylum seekers. And this became a real obsession in that second Blair ministry. You had successful asylum applications halving and at the same time you had temporary working visas which turns potential refugees into precarious workers. You had that kind of visa doubling. So this is a development and an intensification of a media phenomenon which has much longer origins except now with social media it's fairly easy for a very media savvy political figure like Nigel Farage to just hack into it right away. And I'm afraid that journalists lack either the will, the curiosity, or perhaps dare I say it, the professional skill to reframe it and to serve their audience well. So even when you have journalists and broadcasters who aren't necessarily hostile to the humanity of migrants they still feel the need to post questions to them in ways which I think are gravely insulting to their humanity. I was half listening to Good Morning Britain this morning and Adele Ray who I genuinely think isn't a hostile interlocutor was putting a question to Hassan Akkad who's a Syrian refugee who made the crossing via Turkey in the Calais jungle flew into Heathrow on a forged passport who filmed his whole journey said well there's this feeling out there that asylum seekers are just here for benefits. And while Hassan Akkad because he's a very skilled orator was able to rebuff that question the very framing of it the legitimizing of this feeling as though it is of equal value to facts is a very worrying thing and it can't just be left up to individual refugees who have been able to meet the standards of sainthood necessary to be considered a human being to rebut some of these ideas. These are things which have to come from the media. The last thing because I know I've been rambling on for a bit that I want to say is that it's very worrying that broadcasters have adopted the language of illegal immigrants whenever they see these rubber dinghies of boats because strictly speaking that's not true. You don't have to claim asylum in the first safe country that you reach if even if you are one of the minority of refugees who comes to Europe 85 percent of refugees are hosted by countries which neighbor their home country but you don't have to claim asylum in the first safe place that you see and if you reach the shores of this country and you claim asylum you are not an illegal immigrant by definition you are an asylum seeker until your case is processed and so what's really worrying to me is that this dehumanizing language of illegal immigrant and sometimes just migrant used in a way which has got this kind of venom to it is taking that work which was put in by this unholy alliance between new labour and the right wing tabloids of scaremongering around bogus asylum seekers and it's using these images of desperate people who've been dehumanized, demonized as criminal and dirty to then also delegitimize immigration as a whole. I mean I think it's quite important to be specific. I'm going to go to Aaron in one moment but what was or what I think was wrong with that video because I think there might be some people who watch that and say well he was reasonably polite and obviously it's legitimate to film people you know doing what is a I suppose interesting worrying activity however you want to frame it but if that was done in a sensitive way with context maybe that would have been fine but to do it as live coverage as if it is a sporting event I do think is very distasteful. I suppose one last thing I say is that you know I saw a lot of people saying why don't they just let them on the boat. I'm not actually sure that is the best critique of it because I think I don't even know what the law is on that but I think the idea that as a journalist if you keep out of it as much as possible until you have no choice I'm sure if it capsized right they wouldn't just film them drowning so I wasn't that convinced by the idea of don't let them on the boat but I just thought it was it was a piece of footage which was incredibly dehumanizing. It was the breathlessness right I mean I was watching it I felt like I was watching you know the OJ car chase. So it was a spectacle it was just pure spectacle and the humanity of the people involved was I think that the broadcaster didn't really know what to do with it so he kind of in effect he's like are you okay? They say they're okay and so what that indicates to me is that he doesn't have the ability to within that context provide better coverage that his audience so sorely deserves. Yeah no I thought that the live aspect I thought was terrible I think it makes for terrible journalism I think it's deeply unprofessional I think it's deeply unethical why have they done it because it will probably get the most traffic and it's very cheap you know tomorrow we're going to send out a small crew of three people you know a director of production the presenter and the cameraman you're going to go out on a on a boat and you're going to you know record some people and it will go out live and like you say what would have been far better is a feature speak to people consensually there's also by the way there's a big question about the the journalistic ethics of this just recording people who are very vulnerable it's like recording somebody who's just been assaulted on the street or robbed without their consent you know so I think it's a deeply I actually probably think it's probably against the BBC's own general conventions on journalistic ethics I'm very surprised it was done actually similar in some ways the sort of the live streaming of the Cliff Richard house break in the only difference being by the police a few years ago the only difference being of course these people are powerless and might have a have the ability to get a lawyer and to sue potentially but it does tell you a great deal about the more problematic areas of our our country's journalistic life and like you said it's the BBC there should be public service broadcasts there should be precisely the place where you can get informed context-driven feature writing featured broadcasts hasn't happened and so I think again I think it was something of an added you know it was it was it was very close to reality TV it was incredibly close and this is not the first time we're seeing it the BBC we saw it even often with the coverage of the Labour Party you know it looked like a you know one of these kind of telly novellas from Latin America Laura Coonsburg thought she was actually one of the one of the protagonists within the story you know this this reality TV show like big brother you know one ding dong between this person and Jeremy Corbyn this person Jeremy Corbyn that isn't journalism and nor is this and then finally you know I wonder what's what's the best and I think it's something for our audience as well what's the best way for left-wing media left-wing journalists to deal with this because I don't think we would want to do that I don't think we would want to livestream that to me that was kind of like one rung below Jeremy Kyle I mean you could have done the exact same thing with Jeremy Kyle there nobody thinks Jeremy Kyle is a journalist right he was a reality TV provocateur shouting at people and it would be the same thing and I think it's really really troubling and then finally on the same day it's attracted less media coverage but I watched it in real time I said good morning it was this morning uh with India Willoughby she was being interviewed and she said I think it's time that you know the French say they want 30 million a year to source it I think we should put barbed wire in the English channel now five years ago that was Katie Hopkins and it was called out for the rancid saydo populism that it is and yeah she said this and people didn't really respond nobody's coming that's that's really outrageous and you have to wonder and be worried about how normalize these these discourses are becoming is that a normal thing to say now I didn't think it was maybe it is is that I think one of the problems problems is is that we've got a media culture which rewards right-wing stupidity now I've got no idea how India Willoughby identifies her own politics it might be the case that she's a long time reader of the morning star that's not what I mean when I'm talking about right-wing stupidity I'm talking about things which fit into a right-wing frame which views uh you know migration by desperate people is inherently illegitimate as threatening and something which has to be guarded against you know almost like you would you know bacteria a virus something dirty and something wrong and it's something which is I think really quite deep in bits of the nation's psyche and I think that you have no better finger on you know the clogged artery of middle England than when you watch morning television uh on the Jeremy Vine show this morning there were callers calling in saying the country is full when I was on question time once a woman said the country is sinking we're overcrowded we can't fit any more now Glasgow city built for a million it's currently got 600 000 you've got demographic aging for a low productivity economy um you've also got a lot of land you could build more housing on and you also have a lot of empty properties which are just as investment portfolios for the very wealthy in London um it's absolutely not true that we don't have the room we don't have the physical room but this level of um complete meatheadedness has been validated by a media culture which says that your feeling of being threatened or swamped by scary migrants is as legitimate as a discussion of Britain's international obligations the real facts about the movement of people in fact but actually Britain isn't seeing the majority of asylum applications made to European countries we have you know about 30 000 fewer than Greece even and that's not even get started on France and Germany that we don't have a particularly generous benefit system you have 44 000 asylum seekers living on five pounds a day you try building a life in five pounds a day you've got a media culture which says yes madam I know that you've got a soloing stake where your brain should be but that doesn't mean that you can't weigh in on this discussion about what to do with deeply traumatized and vulnerable people as though you are an expert and I think that's something that's wrong I think that's something that's really wrong the devaluing of firsthand knowledge of what it's like to work in the sector and what it's like to be an asylum seeker as well you know I don't want to obsess about the the numbers thing because even if they were half a million people trying to cross the channel I still think saying that we're going to put up barbed wire so they think would be you know disgraceful but I think the fact that we are pushed to a point where people are openly saying on morning television that what we should do is intentionally drown people who are coming to this country to seek asylum you know it killed them essentially we've been driven to that because 4 000 people have crossed the channel that's like two secondary schools you know we're a country of 60 million people people that could build two secondary schools have come over and that is such a challenge to our identity and British civilization that it has become acceptable to talk about intentionally killing people like how low is the threshold to drive us into you know basically the language of fascism