This week we saw both BBC Breakfast and Sky News film disturbing, dehumanizing reports of asylum seekers attempting the dangerous journey of crossing the Channel.

Shouting down at them from the safety of ships, journalists reported as though it were sport. One reporter even stood by trying to interview people as they desperately tried to remove water leaking into their tiny boat.

Asylum seekers and refugees crossing the Channel should not be made into spectacles by the British media.

Following dinghies live on-air endangers the lives of the people onboard by revealing their identities. It also dehumanizes them, further adding to the rising xenophobic and anti-refugee rhetoric we see creeping back into public discourse.

Media channels like Sky and the BBC should not send journalists onto boats to report in this way. These are people's lives and they deserve our love, respect and support. The only difference between us is luck.

I am calling on the BBC and Sky to apologise and commit not to reporting on refugees and asylum seekers crossing the channel in this dehumanizing way again.

Please help by signing this petition.