The migrant crisis needs hard facts, not BBC handwringing

AT DAWN on a Greek island beach, as hundreds of migrants f r om t he Turkish mainland struggle out of the chilly waters, one man collapses with hypothermia.

Volunteers rush to wrap him in blankets, and a medic checks his pulse. Then the crowds part. An impossibly handsome man, his beard glowing with manly compassion, strides through. ‘I am a doctor!’ he cries.

Why, it is Dr Xand van Tulleken, and he’s brought a lifesaving television crew with him. Make way!

The first medic looks daggers at him. It’s a moment of exciting professional rivalry. But Dr Xand is too charismatic to stoop to petty rivalries. He flashes a heroic smile. ‘I am always happy to see another doctor,’ he declares.

Dr Xand and his twin brother, Dr Chris, appear to have escaped from an Australian hospital soap, the kind where dewyeyed nurses break their hearts every week over the dashing surgeons.

Providing they stick to shallow documentaries, investigating fad diets and binge drinking, there’s not much harm in the Van Tullekens. But it was distasteful to see them posturing with refugees in Frontline Doctors: Winter Migrant Crisis (BBC1) — and alarming to see how easily the Beeb let them gloss over the wider concerns.

More than a million migrants, from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and as far away as Sri Lanka, poured into Europe last year, half of them via the island of Lesbos. Dr Xand and Dr Chris were there just long enough to see two boatloads land, not even a quarter of the influx on a single day.

Their cameras kept seeking out women and children, though the majority of migrants appeared to be men under 40. The voiceover told us repeatedly that there were ‘ many families with young children’ — but no statistics were available, no demographic analysis, no hard facts.

As they followed the migrant route across Europe, the twins were keen to be seen treating photogenic youngsters, like the chatty tenyearold who had brought nothing from Syria but two coins.

At the infamous ‘Calais Jungle’ and in a city of tents outside Dunkirk, we met one little boy with trench foot and another with measles, both of them living in squalor.

Such sights are horrible. It’s hideous to think of children suffering like this anywhere, let alone so close to home. But by swooping on these cases, the BBC is shamelessly manipulating the emotions of viewers, without offering real context.

We are invited on a selfindulgent guilt trip, to reassure ourselves that we are ‘nice people’ because we don’t like to see children suffering.

There were many troubling questions unasked. How many of those children were with their own families? Were they being used as human passports? And where were the sisters and mothers of all these single young men — had they been abandoned in the war zones?

Dr Xand and Dr Chris didn’t ask. They seemed incapable of doing more than wringing their hands, and fretting that their own children had lots of Christmas and birthday presents, while these poor mites had nothing.

It’s the selfsatisfied lament of the liberal: ‘Gosh, I feel bad because I’m so well off. Life just isn’t fair.’

Our heartstrings were being tugged in a more straightforward way in Vet On The Hill (More4) which introduced us to another dashing, impossibly handsome medic — this time, Aussie animal doctor Scott Miller. He runs a trio of London practices that specialise in caring for delicate pet owners.

One lady melted onto the surgery floor in a melodramatic heap when she learned that her mongrel, BamBam, had a tumour that meant he’d lose the tip of his tail.

There were lots of tears: when I interviewed Scott last month, he told me: ‘People pour out their hearts, and you’d have to be emotionally dead inside not to empathise. I go through a lot of tissues!’

Then there was a cat that cooed like a pigeon, an elderly chihuahua who needed diabetes jabs, and a oneeyed hedgehog.

It’s all designed to reduce us to sniffling jellies, of course. But at least this is honest-to-goodness manipulation.