Giving Compass' Take:
- Gretel Kahn discusses what newsrooms are getting wrong and what they can do to fix immigration coverage, particularly coverage of climate immigration.
- How can audiences and newsrooms shift away from simple narratives about immigration to portraits of climate immigration that reflect the nuance of the issue?
- Ask a custom question to find other nonprofits focused on immigration news coverage.
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The global news agenda has been dominated in recent years by a handful of major stories: the rise of Donald Trump, the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the rising cost of living, and the impact of both immigration and climate change.
Against this backdrop, the Digital News Report 2026 examined how audiences rate the news coverage of each of these major stories. While many of our respondents were unhappy about how the media reports on many of these issues, immigration stood out as the area of greatest dissatisfaction.
This dissatisfaction cuts across countries, levels of trust in news, and political affiliations. In France, both those who trust the news and those who do not are critical of immigration coverage. In the UK, dissatisfaction spans the political spectrum, underscoring just how difficult it is to cover such a contentious issue.
To understand what lies behind this dissatisfaction, I spoke to three immigration reporters and a researcher who has studied media narratives around this issue. Together, they shed light on the considerable challenges involved in reporting on migration in the UK and across Europe. They also aim to answer an important question posed to newsrooms: how should they cover a divisive topic when so many people think they are doing a bad job at tackling it?
1. The Breach Between Perception and Reality
In late July, at least 70,000 people crossed into Ceuta, the small Spanish exclave on Africa’s northern coast. The episode was preceded by a torrent of rumours and misleading claims on social media, including false messages suggesting that migrants would be welcomed into Spanish territory. According to the Spanish fact-checking organisation Maldita, those narratives helped convince people it was time to cross.
As the story spread internationally, some of the coverage quickly adopted threatening language. Migrants were described as having “stormed”, “invaded”, or “breached” the border. News reports described those entering as “pouring” and “flooding” into the exclave.
Read the full article about fixing immigration coverage by Gretel Kahn at Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.