Source: Twitter / MSNBC
The continued conflict in Ukraine as the nation is being invaded by Russia has garnered the lion’s share of news coverage, particularly when it comes to refugees fleeing. One MSNBC host sees the glaring disparities of how they’re treated as opposed to refugees of color.
Mehdi Hasan, the MSNBC anchor, and host of the Mehdi Hasan Show on the Peacock network took the media to task for their coverage of Ukrainians fleeing their country as it is under siege by the Russian military forces as ordered by President Vladimir Putin since last week. He made his feelings known while joining fellow anchor Ayman Mohyeldin on his show on Sunday (February 27) for a segment on the topic. “Some of the media coverage of the conflict in Ukraine has been kind of off. We have reporters and pundits making some rather awful remarks about the nature of this conflict and these refugees versus, say, conflicts and refugees in the Middle East.”, he said.
Hasan also pointed out that the European continent has been the platform for consistent and savage conflict but it hasn’t been portrayed that way and highlighted how media outlets have treated Ukrainian refugees differently than those from African and Middle Eastern nations precisely because of race.
“First off, Europe has been home to some of the worst wars and worst war crimes in human history — I mean, the Holocaust. So why this surprise that bad things are happening in Europe? And second, when they say, ‘Oh, civilized cities’ and in another clip, ‘well-dressed people’ and ‘This is not the Third World,’ they really mean white people, don’t they?” These remarks come at a tense time as there are reports of people of African descent who have been living in Ukraine also trying to flee the besieged country but have been turned back at the border with Poland.