BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson is lashing out at his own company for what he calls “terrible mistakes” in covering the UK’s internal immigration debate. The network, he alleges, decided on its own that concerns about large influxes of immigrants were “not acceptable views” and did not cover them.
Robinson, who is speaking out against his own network’s immigration coverage before the release of the new BBC documentary The Truth About Immigration, has told several media outlets that the new reporting is meant to correct what has been a chronic deficiency in coverage of immigration at the network: that concerns about the potentially negative impact on immigration have been swept under the rug. “Historically at the BBC [we] didn’t have a warts-and-all … debate about immigration,” he told The Sunday Times, because many at the network “thought it would unleash some terrible side of the British public.”
The end result, he concluded, was an underinformed public facing unprecedented increases in immigration numbers now that Bulgaria and Romania have new arrangements with the European Union on trans-European migration. The topic has been controversial, as public opinion soured on the idea of thousands of Eastern Europeans potentially flooding the UK and burdening the job market. The conservative government has already begun a crackdown on public benefits, aimed at preventing non-British citizens from signing up for public benefits, taking the money, and going home. The UK is already experiencing significant problems with their Muslim immigrant population, which has contributed alarmingly to jihadist causes in the civil war in Syria and caused problems trying to force non-Muslim British citizens to follow Sharia Law.
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