A/50/476 English Page 33 122. Media coverage of events relating to immigration and its repercussions can help to exacerbate racist and xenophobic sentiments. Foreigners in general, and immigrants in particular, are often characterized by certain media as delinquents or as bringing with them a destabilizing influence, violence, or disease; 64/ or they are presented as people incapable of adapting to the national values. Polls carried out by the media often ask such questions as: "Could the expulsion of immigrants have a favourable influence on the employment situation?" or "Of the following scourges of our society: unemployment, insecurity, immigration, drugs, which seems to you the most urgent to control?". 123. These methods strengthen the informal techniques of exclusion and isolation in urban ghettos and keep alive the culture of intolerance of foreigners or of those of the population belonging to minority groups. As an example, mention might be made of the generally accepted ideas which tend to associate the phenomena of drug abuse, delinquency and terrorism with immigration and racial or ethnic origin and which can, as a result of many repetitions in the media, lead those belonging to the majority group to have mental perceptions in which subjectivity and objectivity become confused. 124. Similarly, the lexicological choice made and the selectivity used in dealing with an event, and thus, for example, in designating some of the actors, will affect the perception that the public will have of an immigrant community or a given ethnic or racial group. 65/ Thus, the deliberate choice made by certain journalists to cover only sensational events helps to create a caricature, an often unfavourable image, of ethnic minorities. The latter will appear on the front page only when one of their number is involved in a matter relating to morals, drugs or illegal immigration and, in general, when he or she has failed to conform to the standards of the host society. Thus, certain terms used to designate objective geographical realities, such as "Arabs", "North Africans" or "Africans", have, as a result of their pernicious use, come to have pejorative connotations among the fringe population in Western societies. 125. When foreigners are presented in a favourable light by the media, the emphasis is on their utilitarian aspect, their essential contribution to the national (economic) wealth, and only rarely on their cultural enrichment contribution. Some reports, by presenting the traditions of minorities in an old-fashioned or quaint manner, may help to perpetuate the myth of the noble savage and there may be inherent in them the view of the superiority of the majority culture of Western society, more urbanized and further removed from its peasant roots or traditions. The existence of ethnic minorities is justified only by their contribution to the well-being of the majority or as a result of its good will. 126. To take the example of the United States, the media, apart from substituting the term "African American" for those of "Nigger", "Negro" or "Black", in feigned or genuine support of the doctrine of "political correctness", should endeavour to provide images of the African-American community which are not reduced to the clichés of dealer, prostitute, procurer, drug addict or delinquent. 127. It is comforting and encouraging to note the mobilization of certain papers specializing in political analysis or commentary to denounce and censure racism /...