This chapter focuses on the negative coverage, as this affords a greater insight into the contested understandings of race, national identity and migration. It discusses the media and its role in shaping understandings of migrants. Stuart Hall has used the term 'naturalistic illusion' to denote the way in which media representations are not pure but the product of human agency and therefore deeply embedded in power relations and this is a helpful way to understand how perception is always mediated through the practices and ideologies that shape social relations. The concept of 'moral panic' helps us understand the way in which disparate events are interlinked in media stories. Hence, asylum and terrorism have become connected in the mind of the public and reinforced by the commentary of politicians and media commentators. The language used in media accounts is not neutral but imbued with symbolic meaning that reinforces a particular narrative of social reality.