The media should take the lead in representing ethnic minorities rather than pander to extreme simplifications and stereotyping, according to a leading academic.
Professor Peadar Kirby told a conference in Dublin that European leaders were showing a disturbing complacency about the rise of the political ultra-right which was exploiting racism.
The professor was speaking at the opening of a conference on the future of diversity in Irish media organised by Dublin City University.
It is being attended by Irish-born journalists and members of ethnic minorities here.
The academic has taught Politics in the University of Limerick and in Valencia in Spain.
He said there was a danger that at a time of severe economic recession, diversity in the media might be seen as a luxury.
But he urged media outlets to expose negative attitudes towards the new Irish based on resentment that they are depriving members of the ethnic majority of jobs.
Professor Kirby said the move towards a more profit-oriented media has been marked by an increased pandering to negative stereotyping of immigrants and their families.
Presenting the results of a five-country survey of 68 journalists on training media workers in diversity, Dr Neil O'Boyle of DCU said the majority of organisations that provided such training are publicly-owned and that the Netherlands and the UK are the best at training.
He quoted a former Director-General of the BBC, who described his organisation 11 years ago as "hideously white".
Franziska Fehr, a co-author of the EU-sponsored survey, said it recommended that each media organisation should have a diversity champion, or department, so that responsibility does not rest entirely with journalistic bodies and educational institutions.
Ireland and Italy are reported as having no mechanisms for monitoring diversity in their media output.
Greece and Poland have virtually no monitoring.
