Abstract
Journalists covering migration often encounter suspicion, hostility and persecution which undermine their efforts to report critically and inclusively, thereby constituting attacks on press freedom. They add to the existing challenges of covering migration, especially at borders and displacement areas where journalists witness human drama and illegal refoulements. However, research rarely examines migration journalists’ practices or perceptions. To address this gap, this study draws from 10 semi-structured interviews with journalists experienced in covering migration for international media from EU entry countries or from areas of displacement like the Middle East. As they document migrants’ agency, journalists demonstrate their own agency navigating professional and personal challenges. Findings show that reporting on migration from an inclusive perspective, sometimes can be like a Sisyphean battle: The media system and the migration regime seem broken, while part of the audience remains uninterested even when confronted with the most extreme forms of human suffering. Participants discussed the challenges of reporting migration and reflected on the professional, personal and ethical dilemmas they face. Their accounts provide crucial entry points to exploring and consequently overcoming multi-level limitations in news media coverage of migration.
Keywords
Introduction
Journalists covering migration in Europe often encounter hostility, face surveillance harassment and persecution from authorities resembling authoritarian environments (Faris et al., 2023) and harassment from non-state, anti-migrant groups (Cusumano and Bell, 2021; Kirchgaessner and Giuffrida 2025; Montali et al., 2013). These are deliberate attempts to deter journalists from covering migration from critical and inclusive perspectives, thereby constituting attacks on press freedom. They add to the existing challenges of covering migration, especially at borders and displacement areas where journalists routinely witness human drama. Journalistic paradoxes, such as the pursuit of neutrality and objectivity exacerbate these difficulties and coupled with backlash on social media (Avraamidou, 2026), impact journalists mental health and well-being (Adjin-Tettey et al., 2025; Feinstein and Storm, 2017).
Research on journalists reporting on migration offers limited insights into their unique challenges (Arcila-Calderón et al., 2023; Avraamidou, 2026; Feinstein and Storm, 2017; Mertens et al., 2024). Studies on journalism and marginalized groups, and on journalism and humanitarian crises, add more nuance. Still, we lack an understanding of journalists’ agentic processes, and capacity for critical reporting on migration, within, and despite of powerful structures: How migration journalists themselves imagine, evaluate and finally act upon their choices exercising agency (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998), forms the focus of this study. Interest is on journalists reporting on people on the move who cross borders mostly irregularly facing oppression, repression, and discrimination (Pijnenburg and Rijken, 2021), and who are called herein with the generic “migrants”. Overall, as journalists attempt to document migrants’ agency, they also navigate their own agency within a politically charged and professionally precarious landscape.
This study examines how migration journalists navigate institutional, professional, personal and ethical challenges when covering migration to understand the challenges of reporting on migration, including threats to safety, and emotional well-being. Drawing from 10 semi-structured qualitative interviews with journalists with extensive experience covering migration for international media from EU entry-countries in the Mediterranean and the Balkans, and from conflict and displacement areas (e.g., Middle East) the study provides insights to experiences of reporting on migration and addresses relevant constraints that shape legacy news media coverage.
The study offers a number of contributions. First, it provides insights that can support freer and resilient journalism (Høiby, 2020). Second, thousands of people lose their lives at borders in preventable ways and consequently there is a need for quality journalism that documents their journeys and the politics that underpin them. Third, journalists’ in-depth understanding of the media can help expose more subtle ways of stereotyping complementing existing research. Overall, journalists’ accounts offer critical entry points for exploring multi-level limitations of legacy news media coverage of migration.
News media and migration
In the global north, news media outlets construct migration as a problem (Kostopoulos and Mylonas 2022) or a crisis (Krzyżanowski et al., 2018). Alarmist media discourses about a “European refugee crisis” in 2015 dominated legitimizing exceptional measurers (Krzyżanowski et al., 2018). Media portrayals of migrants are Eurocentric (Avraamidou, 2020) and migrants are rarely heard (Nikunen, 2019) while journalists over-rely on official sources (Thorbjørnsrud and Figenschou, 2014; Zaman and Das, 2021).
News media use a militarized and sensationalist lexicon, referring to migrants as intruders or conquerors (Colombo, 2018) and accusing them of stealing locals’ jobs and exploiting welfare benefits (Falekas et al., 2012). The 2020 pandemic reinforced the health threat frame as migrants were represented as COVID spreaders (De Rosa et al., 2023). The media associate specific ethnicities or cultures with certain crimes: In the early 2000s, the Italian media portrayed Romanians as potential rapists (Binotto, 2015) and linked Latin American children to street gangs (Baú, 2022), while the Greek and Italian media associated Albanians with violence. Muslim men are frequently represented as terrorists and predators in Europe and the US (Holmes and Castaneda, 2016). Contrarily, media represent more positively Christian and white refugees like the Ukrainians (Prieto-Andrés et al., 2024; Theodorou, 2024).
Refugees are portrayed as victims of war in their countries or of discrimination in receiving countries (Kadianaki et al., 2018). Women and children are ideal victims while veiled women are portrayed as victims of Islamic culture and Muslim men (Terrón-Caro et al., 2022). Victimization frames dominate when women and children die during shipwrecks in the Mediterranean but they are frequently combined with discourses on smuggling promoting stricter policies (Kalfeli et al., 2024). Humanitarian representations of migrants and refugees as ultimate victims, powerless and lacking agency commodify suffering (Gorin, 2025). News media create a sense of pity (Georgiou, 2018) which further dehumanizes migrants as others (Chouliaraki and Zaborowski, 2017) resulting in compassion fatigue (Kyriakidou, 2021).
Finally, the news media also use utilitarian representations of migrants underlining their positive impact on the economy as cheap laborers doing jobs rejected by the locals (Avraamidou et al., 2018; Terrón-Caro et al., 2022). Also, elite migrants are casted as more welcome (Kostopoulos, 2024) and those outside utilitarian and victimization frames are underserving (Kadianaki et al., 2018).
Journalistic roles and practices
In journalism, being a detached observer is a contested ideal (Beazer et al., 2025) and is difficult to uphold when reporting on humanitarian tragedies or marginalized communities like migrants. As Kotišová (2019: 5) remarks, “In crisis reporting, more than in other journalistic fields, journalists’ position between an involved actor and detached observer, entailing the dichotomies of engaged/non-participating, active/passive, empathic/dispassionate, or close/distant, becomes more palpable and pressing”.
Faced with human suffering, journalists question their professional commitment to objectivity which affects their role perceptions, practices and emotions (Kotišová, 2019; Olsson, 2017). These tensions increase when they intervene to help those in distress. For example, Finnish journalists often assumed advocacy roles with migrants and navigated between the collaborative and watchdog roles in interacting with officials (Ojala and Pöyhtäri, 2019). Their interactions with anti-migrant groups prompted them to adopt either a partisan stance with liberal values or a neutral observer stance to avoid being seen as biased. Similarly, southern European journalists’ coverage of migration varied depending on whether they believed journalism should remain detached or whether it should involve advocacy (Arcila-Calderón et al., 2023). While for most journalists activism should not be confined with journalism, some believe that solidarity with minorities is as an ethical value of journalism (Beazer et al., 2025).
Witnessing human suffering can lead to trauma, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Massé, 2011; Smith et al., 2018). Ethical dilemmas, especially guilt can contribute to PTSD (Backholm and Idas, 2015). Namely, journalists covering the refugee crisis suffered from moral injury as a result of helping refugees while dealing with overwhelming workload and lacking support from their employers (Feinstein and Storm, 2017).
Reporting on migration or border crises presents other professional challenges. Journalists must verify information and meet deadlines while facing restricted access to camps and borders (Ruiz-Aranguren, 2024). Their work is shaped by the oppressive policies of the nation states in which they report (cf. Hellmueller and Berglez, 2022). These restrictions hinder journalists’ ability to document refugees’ conditions and to hold authorities accountable for abuses, undermining the public’s right to be informed. Importantly, without media reports, refugees remain invisible, reducing public awareness and pressure on authorities to improve migrants’ conditions. This becomes more difficult when they face precarious employment (Arcila-Calderón et al., 2023).
Journalists in southern Europe covering migration, characterise migration news as biased, simplistic, alarmist and dehumanizing (Arcila-Calderón et al., 2023). They propose quoting migrants and investigating the causes behind migration (Arcila-Calderón et al., 2023). However, newsrooms’ hierarchies, lack of diversity and media cultures inhibit inclusive migration reporting. For instance, journalists have to navigate editors and media organizations’ expectations to report on marginalized groups in specific and at times discriminatory ways (Beazer et al., 2025). Simultaneously, social inequalities or diversity are not always considered newsworthy (Vandenberghe et al., 2020). Moreover, newsrooms, as research in the UK, Germany and Belgium has shown, lack diversity (Beazer et al., 2025; Vandenberghe et al., 2020) and journalists from marginalized groups can encounter discrimination (Douglas 2022).
Methodology
Journalists can reflect critically on their professional experiences and offer unique insights to understand the specific challenges contributing to problematic news coverage of migration (Pfadenhauer, 2009; Shumow, 2012). Participants reported from Europe’s land and sea borders (e.g., Balkans, Mediterranean). Some covered migration also in the US and displacement in Iraq and Palestine, and therefore are familiar with forced human displacement.
Thousands of people die annually attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea towards EU MS like Italy, Greece and Cyprus (De Vincenzo and Zamperini, 2023) which conduct illegal refoulements or pushbacks (Dines, Montagna and Ruggiero 2015; Human Rights Watch, 2024; Koros, 2021) and run controversial hotspots (e.g., Lampedusa) characterised by human right abuses. In the Balkans, thousands of migrants are stranded in extreme conditions of vulnerability (Zoppi and Puleri, 2022) while a system of biopolitical surveillance is set in place across EU borders (Bueno Lacy and Van Houtum, 2024). Fences, camps and walls to keep migrants out, are also meant to keep the media away: Journalists have been blocked from reporting, and some were detained (Reporters without borders, 2018). These conditions, coupled with increased state anti-migrant hostility, shape the work of journalists, like our participants. Reporting from borders, as argued elsewhere resembles the conditions of war journalism and humanitarian crisis reporting (Avraamidou, 2026).
Through social media, email, and snowballing, we secured and interviewed 10 participants between May and October 2021. Participants reported for influential quality media (Demata 2017) like BBC, Channel 4, CNN, NYT, DW News and ALJ addressing an international audience. They report in hostile contexts for journalists and migrants (Reporters without borders, 2018). Nine participants were freelancers, and one a permanent staff. Seven women and three men, aged between mid-20s to mid-40s participated. Nationalities represented were Greek, American, British, Moroccan, Syrian, Italian and German. As migration is politically sensitive and there is a limited number of migration journalists, anonymity is crucial to protect participants from potential professional, political or personal repercussions. Therefore, all interviewees are referred as Participant 1 (P1) and so on. No specific locations are disclosed while we do not specify each participant’s profile. The study adhered to best ethical practices receiving explicit, recorded consent by each participant and granting full anonymity.
Interviews were conducted (Zoom) based on an interview guide organized in four inter-related topics: (1) traditional media (e.g., how participants perceive the role of news media in migration), (2) social media (e.g., how they use social media & user engagement), (3) professional practices generally and their own (e.g., relationships with sources; how they select stories; difficulties faced) and (4) Identity and personal experiences, including their well-being (e.g., how they got engaged with migration; what motivates them; how it is to witness human drama). Questions were tailored to match each participant’s expertise based on a thorough background check.
Journalists having expertise in migration were limited, and even less could invest time to participate, especially during the pandemic. After conducting 10 interviews it became clear that we had a rich data-set for an insightful qualitative analysis (cf. Adjin-Tettey et al., 2025). While every participant was bringing-in unique experiences, with the tenth interview it was evident that little extremely new information was gathered. Interviews lasted between 60 and 120 min, and one for 20 min. Two interviews were conducted in Greek, seven in English and one in both languages.
Overview of the coding scheme.
Overview of final themes.
Findings
The migration experience at the center
This theme presents a critique to homogenized and victimizing news media content (sub-theme 1) and explores participants’ perceptions about the importance of contextualizing migration and capturing nuances (sub-theme 2).
Beyond homogenized and victimizing content
A common concern participants raised was the dominance of homogenized narratives in migration coverage such as victimization frames which homogenize the migration experience and present migrants as passive and uniform or as P1 noted as “poor migrants”. Another homogenizing frame was demonizing young migrant men (Holmes and Castaneda, 2016). P3 said: The idea of the predatory young man coming to take women and jobs, I see it, replicated to across different language media and it couldn't be further from the truth; when you're reporting on the ground and meeting these young men who are the most vulnerable people, I’ve ever met. (P3)
At times, participants found it challenging to surpass these dominant media narratives. P5 reporting from the Mediterranean, explained that sometimes she couldn’t publish stories without “tears, blood and drama”, pointing to a media preference for sensationalist coverage. P2 warned of a “slippery slope” because the media consider only extreme situations of migrant suffering as newsworthy. He remarked that the media and the humanitarian protection system promote such narratives because of a common-sensical belief that only frames of victimization can inspire solidarity by Europeans. This critique reflects concerns about the Eurocentrism of media humanitarianism (Avraamidou, 2020). Emphasis on migrant suffering, he added, also distracts the audience from border policies and migration governance. Participants shared concerns that focusing on desperation and migrants’ material circumstances can lead to sensationalism rather than activating sympathy (Brown et al., 2018).
P5 attributed the existence of similar narratives to a media “herd mentality”: Also, there is a “herd mentality” in the media, and in international media, meaning that the one follows the other […] this means that there may be a topic, a very serious topic etc., and which if it is not first for instance covered by the Guardian, then the Times may not pay attention. But if Spiegel publishes it, and the Guardian sees it, then there will be a snowballing effect, and [compete] about who will write the most reports whereas earlier they wouldn’t pay any attention.
This concern mirrored another common practice observed by participants: journalists often visit well-known locations and speak to the same people. P6 reporting from the Balkans (land borders) said, “Journalists tend to go to the same squats over and over. The ones that are very easy to find and the ones that are in media before.” These journalists also approach migrants who could express themselves in the journalists’ language or English, leaving the stories of others untold. This limited originality.
P2 questioned why migrants were not depicted as the “empowered, intelligent persons they are?” and argued that the public can recognize when the coverage is misleading: “People see through stories that are not truthful, you know, that feel like an NGO campaign, rather than journalism.”. Therefore, participants aimed to capture nuance, and to contextualize the migration experience.
Capturing nuance and agency
Journalists expressed commitment to being truthful in representing migrants’ circumstances. Balancing migrants ability to make decisions, with the harsh realities of their situation, and therefore reporting on how they demonstrate agency (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998), was a key tension most shared. P3 said that she wanted to capture hope: My stories are quite sad, but I felt like there were lots of stories of hope that was being missed and that was often quite a strong victim narrative being pushed which I didn't see reflected by the people I knew living in some of these places.
The coexistence of hope and sadness appears as an inherent contradiction of the migrant experience that the media miss when only focusing on the latter. P3 felt that by capturing hope, she remained truthful to migrants’ lived experiences and her own personal and professional integrity. Herein, hope is a force (Govier, 2011), rather than a feeling, guiding migrants’ choices and contradicting their passive media representations as helpless victims.
Some participants wanted to have migrants’ lived experiences at the center of their reporting but not as a box-ticking inclusivity practice. P4 with a migratory background described superficial inclusion practices as “side dish quoting” and stressed that, “I, as a migrant, will have the perspective of a migrant at the center of my reporting.”. P1 remarked that details about the personal circumstances of migrants could help the audience relate and connect with them, making the distant “other” more familiar and fostering empathy. This echoes how others argued that the coverage should reflect the multifaceted nature of migration to give the reader a holistic understanding. For participants, it was important to contextualize the plight of migrant people, illustrate the diversity of their experiences which entailed investing time in the “field” and which came with its own challenges.
Challenges in the field
This theme explores two inter-related sub-themes: Investing time and resources to investigate migrant people’s circumstances, and subsequent challenging interactions in the field.
Investing time and resources
Participants spent time, and some even resided in areas where migrants lived, like borders, camps and hotspots, which some called “the field”. This allowed them to tell migrants’ experiences sensitively, and truthfully. Participants criticized superficial reporting practices without proper research, analysis or context describing it as a form of “lazy journalism” but also attributing it to media organizations’ practices. P3 explained: Spending more time in these places and more time in refugee camps, if you're going to write about them, rather than just sort of parachute reporting, so that you don't get a kind of biased view or some partial view; the biggest situation just spending more time in the issues that you're working on or reporting on [and] which is hard for journalists that cover lots of different issues.
Participants expressed concern that parachute reporting by journalists unfamiliar with the local context undermined trust in journalism and contributed to misinformation about migrants. Contrarily, migration reporting requires investing significant time and resources and P2 described “chasing documents” for over a year, which eventually secured him a “big front-page story” at a prestigious outlet. Still, he was frustrated because such work was financially unsustainable and, probably only reached a few readers; P2 rhetorically asked, “who reads news reports of over 6000 words?”
Some participants saw precarity as a detriment to quality migration journalism (Arcila-Calderón et al., 2023). P10 stressed economic constraints that prevent journalists from spending time in the field: “[media] bureaus are closing all over the world and they’re less and less reporters on the ground, less and less money to produce quality journalism.” These insights are informed by participants experiences as most were freelancers. Some recalled times that they had side-jobs to make ends meet, while others talked of unpaid junior colleagues. But, even when resources and time could be invested, they faced challenging interactions in the field.
Dealing with hostility in the field
The rise of anti-migrant rhetoric and of restrictive migration policies presented challenges for journalists in accessing and interacting with potential sources like authorities, local communities, and migrants. Violence directed at those who assist migrants also targeted journalists and participants observed that over time, authorities became more hostile and unwilling to allow journalists entry to camps.
Journalists had multiple levels of interaction with state and local authorities. To access refugee camps, they often depended on authorities controlling the camps. However, their scrutiny of authorities’ handling of migrants and their unsettling questions sometimes led to repercussions. One journalist said that she was in a ministerial stop-list of journalists not permitted to enter a particular camp. These restrictions interfered with journalists’ ability to speak to migrants and report on their conditions. A participant was arrested and detained for several days at land-borders. Yet, journalists regarded questioning authorities crucial in their work. Referring to a Minister’s press briefing, P7 reporting from a hotspot in the Mediterranean, said: I think he [minister] wasn't used to the questions that I would ask, in a critical way and that was annoying him and he was like “that's not a respectful way to talk to a minister,” and I said “What do you mean like this, is just like I’m just asking, are you conducting push backs, you know, or are you offering them up”. I mean, that's my role as a journalist like if I’m only asking you questions that you would like to answer…I’m not a PR [public relations] person like that's not my job.
Participants’ convictions that journalism is neither public relations nor an NGO campaign reflects how they should hold governments accountable about their migration policies. P4 explicitly linked this to journalism’s watchdog function: Sharing the stories of people who are underprivileged or suffering in some way to the rest of the public, yes, it's also sometimes reporting on the mechanisms of government, but mostly it's mostly watchdog reporting right and, but this is very hard.
However, at times, their journalistic identity protected them from exaggerated hostility as authorities feared negative media attention (P9).
Political rhetoric portraying immigrants as threats to national security, economy and culture was often pervasive in local communities where migrant camps were based. In such environments, antimigrant groups used threats and violence to discourage them from reporting. Some faced digital violence, received death threats, sexist and racist remarks (Avraamidou, 2026) echoing research on the safety of migration journalists (Obermaier, 2023). P7 reflects on her perceived identity by locals as an unwanted foreign woman but also on mental challenges (theme 3): It became dangerous in ways to report physically, as well as mentally because I mean people were dragged outside of their cars, windows smashed in, wheels destroyed. Like it was definitely not good considering my profile. For example, I look like such a humanitarian poster woman, no?
Gaining migrants’ trust
Migrants’ perception of media often influenced their attitudes towards journalists: Some hopped to raise awareness about their plights, while others were distrustful. Migrants’ unwillingness could be caused by fear of repression, concern that it might affect their asylum claims or receive backlash from locals or authorities or concerns that their stories could be misrepresented (Gemi et al., 2013). Some participants recognised that migrants were disappointed and frustrated, as they believed, talking to journalists was futile and could not improve their circumstances. P2 recalled: That the subject of our work, that is migrants, don't find our work helpful. I literally been sent away with like objects thrown at me from migrant camps where you know migrants made super clear we don't want you, here we don't want your cameras here.
Trust is an essential element in journalists’ interactions with migrants; that participants were investing time in the field, and they were knowledgeable was a key element that led migrant people trusting them. P5 described how some migrants claimed they did not speak English to avoid a particular journalists but talked to her fluently. Another, with a migratory background said that his cultural proximity to some migrants helped him have honest interactions with them.
Participants noted that migrant people knew the media preferred human drama, and sad stories. P6 reporting from a Balkan border explained that migrants were used to being asked about “problems” (see also theme 1) and they would emphasize specific difficulties even when she wanted to explore other issues: When you speak to refugees here, you know what they always say in the beginning is like ‘[place] big problem, police big problem’. I mean, literally crushing big problems ruins us and everyone wants to talk about that. And they're also used to being asked about that, I think by journalists… I do try to like, I don't know, ask them other questions than just that. I mean focus on their life. It's just sort of their daily life here, which you know often doesn't involve a pushback. I mean, there's, hours and hours in the day in which they're doing other things.
Journalism identity, roles and dilemmas
This theme delves deeper into journalists’ reflections on their role as migration journalists: how they understand perceptions of bias like being seen too political or activists (sub-theme 1), their dilemmas about assisting migrants (sub-theme (2) and on their own mental and emotional struggles (sub-theme 3).
Migration and politics: neither activists nor saviours
Journalists witnessing human suffering renegotiate ethical, emotional and professional boundaries (Cooper, 2020; Kotišová, 2019). Participants had to carefully manage their personal opinions, and professional positions while negotiating their public stance. They knew expressing personal views could undermine the public’s trust in them but found it hard to silence their concerns and criticisms, especially about the scale of human suffering they witnessed, and the role of authorities in it. Managing their professional work and personal opinions on social media was especially challenging (Avraamidou, 2026). Meanwhile, while contextualizing their stories and tackling exclusionary and discriminatory policies was necessary to avoid sensationalizing reporting (theme 1), some participants felt that focus on the political context could be interpreted as a political bias. P8 shared her ethical questions: I often have ethical questions with myself if I’m getting too political. But I try, really, really hard to make sure that everything I have is fact-checked and that I’m not ignoring the other arguments or the other side. Like, I try very hard to be even-handed.
However, migration, for most was also a political issue and should be covered as such. P2 said: “It always feels like you have this constant humanitarian crisis which is there, of course, but it’s very important that is coming across that it's actually a political crisis that’s constantly happening”. He believed migrant people’s lives are shaped by EU border policies and politics. This critique of migration management in the global north was present, to different extent, in participants’ accounts.
Like in crisis reporting, preserving the fine line between journalism, advocacy and activism was a recurrent concern (Cáceres, 2019; Hanitzsch and Vos, 2018). Participants negotiated how far they can engage without compromising their professional norms and position. P7 remarked: What is activism? What is journalism? Where do people box you into? and I mean I’m not an activist, I am a Journalist but I would also tell my opinion sometimes. Of course it's also part of it.
Their reflections on being watchdogs (theme 2), rather than PR or NGO persons, resonate with how they perceived that holding authorities accountable is not activism, but journalism. However, while they rejected the activism label, some acknowledged that often they felt morally obliged to go beyond their journalistic roles. Evidently, the line between professional responsibilities and moral obligation is hard to manage (Olsson, 2017; Stupart, 2021) especially whether, and how to help migrants asking for assistance. In practice, whether to intervene or not depended on journalists’ judgment of the situation: when migrants asked for small, material things, like hygiene products, or crucial ones like assistance when kidnapped, participants negotiated their professional responsibilities and moral obligations and decided on a case-by-case basis, guided by personal judgment and moral obligation. This came at a cost: At the end of being there for coffee, they [migrant people] said, “Oh, you know we need shampoo and we need toilet paper and can you bring that?” … it's difficult so, but thankfully I know all the volunteers here and I can easily ask them, like, well, hey, these people need these things. … But it's still a little bit, you know, I still feel like ethically, I find it ethically difficult. (P6)
Other participants also tried to manage migrants’ expectations of them, especially regarding the potential impact of a report on their lives: People think that things might change from an article, and I try and explain. This won't change anything most likely, but I want to write about it, to raise awareness and try and, you know, push people to make a change but. I try and be as clear as possible that it's not going to have an impact, and which is quite disheartening and also you know I've had people be upset when things don't change immediately. People think that when you come and write a story that things will get better for them and it feels really bad for myself my end to when they don't. Obviously, it feels worse for them.
P3 talked about how her background intertwined with her migration reporting: “ yes, I write about migration, but I mean I try and think that I just write about people and you know […] I mean my family historically are Irish who have migrated, you know, like we all have histories of movement.”. These experiences informed their journalism, offering them a rich contextual knowledge to cover migration, making them relatable to migrants (theme 2.3). Future research can shed more light into how journalists negotiate their own identity (e.g., migratory background, gender) and positionality in their professional choices when reporting on migration.
The emotional toll of reporting migration
Participants shared traumatic experiences and tensions between their responsibilities as journalists and their moral obligations as human beings which can create feelings of guilt, stress and trauma (Seely, 2019). P9 recalled sleepless nights and recurring nightmares that led him request time off. He explained the difficulty to switch back to his everyday life after witnessing devastation: First of all, someone who is systematically involved with this issue [migration] finds it difficult to remain psychologically unaffected. There is an issue around mental health which personally and with many colleagues we discuss and it is a major issue and not particularly well known. For instance, being for a week in absolute destitution and then returning home and your son tells you, “dad, I cannot access the internet”, you know, to switch is painful. P5 also explained that she suffered from trauma and panic attacks: I had a panic attack so I started seeing a psychologist who was in a group called the “refugee trauma initiative” and they were created to provide psychological support to refugees and people who work with refugees and […]I remember this psychologist told me, and we continued the sessions for a while, and she told me that she saw signs of PTSD. So it's... Yes, I know the methods to shut it down when I'm working but when I'm sitting or when I'm away from the field, uh... all this comes back.
P8 compared the field to a war zone, and the impact of violence on her: “Especially at […] 1 there were injuries, yes it was a war zone or when once I visited […] at the camp at night, there was fight, stabbings, drugs.” These accounts complement research about the impact of witnessing human suffering for a prolonged time on journalists’ well-being (Backholm and Idås, 2020; Feinstein and Storm, 2017). Witnessing suffering marked their working conditions as all invested time in the field.
Discussion
The study shows how media narratives and practices are produced by the interactions of media organisations, journalists, authorities and migrants. Consequently, structural constraints and professional ideals meet in the production of migration reports. Participants’ accounts point to a vicious cycle in the media’s coverage of migration: the media favor victim-stories (“blood and tears”) and seek more shocking cases, believing this is what the public wants; journalists search for stories with new angles while trying to meet media expectations, and scrutinizing authorities while migrants often tell stories they hope will get public’s attention. Journalists want to surpass repetitive, simplistic and shallow coverage and show how migrants exercise their agency by constantly making choices for their lives. But, caught in the middle, some found themselves in an uneasy paradox, being seen as biased for being pro-migrant or antimigrant.
Despite the media’s preference in human interest or sensational stories, journalists do not want to ignore the political aspects of migration. They recognize that human interest stories can lead to empathy and solidarity (d’Haenens and de Lange, 2001; Piazza and Haarman, 2011) but also to compassion fatigue (Gorin, 2024). Most combine human interest frames with political approaches (Aalberg and Beyerp, 2015), an uncommon practice in news coverage of migration (Watson, 2023). Individual experiences should be explained with broader political contexts to illustrate the diversity of peoples’ experiences and question the politics that affect these experiences.
The study also contributes to debates about professional dilemmas in humanitarian crises. Reporting on migration presented many challenges to journalists, varying from accessing information to gaining the trust of migrants and concerns about self-safety (Ruiz-Aranguren, 2024). During information gathering, participants faced hostility and violence from authorities, and from local anti-migrant groups. Practising watchdog journalism under these pressures became harder while also trying to gain the trust of people whose stories they were reporting. Safety concerns following violence against journalists who were perceived as pro-migrants and state hostility adds to arguments about unforeseen anti-press violence especially at borders (Mitra et al., 2025). The precarity of working conditions further exacerbated the challenges journalists experience personally and professionally blurring the line between professional norms and moral obligations (Arcila-Calderón et al., 2023; Kotišová 2019; Stupart, 2021).
Conclusion
Journalists work in a media environment that favours sensationalism and victimization and report from hostile political contexts (towards migrants, and journalists). They are concerned that media content on migration lacks contextualization and diversity as illustrated in the pervasiveness of victimization frames, echoing existing research on media representations of migration. To offer nuance, and to tackle the politics and the policies that mark the migration experience, journalists navigate professional and personal challenges. For instance, they have to bypass constant restrictions in accessing information, they have to build trust with migrants, ensure their physical and mental well-being, and at times that of migrant people. This leaves them in a constant state of reflecting on their professional roles, choices and identity. To produce interesting, relevant stories with limited resources while operating in hostile environments are some examples that demonstrate the complex interplay between structural constraints, organisational expectations and professional ideals. Consequently, inclusive reporting on migration sometimes can resemble a Sisyphean battle: The media system and the migration regime seem broken and unfixed, while audiences are unable or unwilling to engage empathetically with people on the move, even when confronted with extreme human plight. This can render journalistic commitment and hard work as almost futile, especially when it has repercussions on one’s well-being. It can also deter journalists from covering migration.
Like the migrants they report on, migration journalists exercise agency which is heavily constrained by significant power asymmetries (e.g., employers, authorities). The current political environment increases these obstacles but also makes inclusive and insightful journalism on migration more important. The study clearly illustrates multiple areas for improvement at organizational, professional and structural levels. Newsrooms must support more contextualized reporting on migration, providing journalists with the time and resources needed to go beyond sensationalist frames. Improvements in journalists’ working conditions, such as institutional support and job security, would also enable more to produce insightful reports. Meanwhile, authorities should be held accountable for their own actions that are ultimately attacks to press freedom. Participants’accounts, and how they negotiate tensions, and paradoxes to produce quality journalism, are also valuable lessons for journalism education; future research can build on them to improve guidelines and best practices in the coverage of borders, displacement, and migration.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the DESIRE members (Vrije Universiteit Brussels) for their insightful comments in earlier versions of this article. The authors are also grateful to the participants of the study without whom this work would not have been possible. Finally, authors would like to acknowledge how comments from two anonymous reviewers helped them to improve clarity and the overall quality of the article.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Research and Innovation Foundation Grant: POST-DOC/0916/0115.
Ethical considerations
This project received ethical approval from a national review board. Although there is no separate approval for the interviews, participants gave oral (recorded) consent and were assured confidentiality; the participants names are omitted and there is no reference to their complete profile to ensure anonymity. Also, all references to places, organizations and persons are omitted again to ensure anonymity.
