As a foreign correspondent, Ben Doherty has written about the movement of displaced people around the world for years.
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The Guardian immigration journalist, who once worked for the Bendigo Advertiser, has reported on Tamils leaving Sri Lanka and Hazaras bidding farewell to Afghanistan.
But since returning to Australia in 2014, he has had a tougher time writing about asylum seekers and refugees.
A member of the team to report on the Nauru Files, documents leaked this month detailing the treatment of offshore detainees, Mr Doherty said limited access to the island nation has been an especially frustrating part of his job.
He has been denied a visa to visit Nauru four times.
The 35-year-old will visit Bendigo next weekend for the Rural Australians for Refugees national conference, joining fellow media identities Nick Olle on a panel to discourse the media’s use of language to report on people seeking asylum.
It is a topic on which he is well-versed, having taken a sabbatical from reporting last year to study at the University of Oxford in England, penning a paper about the rhetoric that surrounds those that seek refuge in Australia.
“It’s really noticeable how polarised and aggressive the entire asylum seeker debate has become and how language has become pejorative and offensive,” Mr Doherty said.
“We see refugees described as illiterate and innumerate. All these sorts of tropes and narratives are deeply embedded in the way Australians talk about them.”
The problem was not helped by the distance between Australians and detained asylum seekers, he said.
Despite being perturbed by some portrayals of people seeking asylum, Mr Doherty said differences in the way media outlets reported on the subject was a sign of the press’ freedom.
“I'd be more troubled if everyone was in furious agreement about what's happening,” he said, explaining people often disagreed with what he wrote.
“We're supposed to be cynical and we're supposed to question.”
While exposing human rights abuses was important work, he conceded it had a “cumulative affect” upon him. As a father of a two-year-old daughter, he said images of children held in Nauru playing with cockroaches because they did not have any toys were especially upsetting.
“I'd be lying if I said there weren't little instances that stay in my head.”
Olle to join conference
Television journalist Nick Olle will join this year’s Rural Australians for Refugees conference in Bendigo next weekend.
Mr Olle will join the September 3 and 4 event to discuss refugee advocacy and the media’s portrayal of asylum seekers.
“It's important that refugee groups communicate with one voice,” Mr Olle said.
“The louder and more unified the voice, the harder it is to get away with this (discrediting their experiences).”
Mr Olle said the two major political parties shared one outlook on border protection, policies that caused ongoing suffering for refugees.
“There's a certain public fatigue - or at least the perception of it - on these issues and we need to cut through that.”
Julian Burnside and Pamela Curr, both critics of offshore detention, will also speak at next weekend’s event.