German media bias falsely inflates crime by foreigners

"We are charting something like the fever curve of society," journalism professor Thomas Hestermann said of his new study, "Crime and Migration: Perception in German Media,"which examined how the nationality and ethnicity of crime suspects has been reported since 2007. Hestermann's team at the Macromedia University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg compiled their 2025 findings for the Berlin-based Mediendienst Integration, a research service for journalists that focuses on migration, integration and asylum. The results, published on Friday, are alarming: "Foreign suspects are mentioned about three times more often than their share in police statistics." ... Media coverage has consequences, Hestermann said, because it affects how people form their ideas about violent crime. They ask themselves: "How much danger am I actually in? Who poses a threat?" Hestermann's study sought to answer similar questions: "How is the perception of violence changing? How is the view of the suspects and their origins changing?" He described different reactions he observed using the example of two attacks that took place in Munich and Mannheim in 2025: "Munich: A young Afghan man allegedly drives into a crowd, killing two people. Shortly afterwards in Mannheim: A German man also drives into a crowd, killing two random victims." And what happened in the media? Public broadcaster ARD aired a prime-time report on the attack in Munich, but not about the one in Mannheim. Altogether, the study counted twice as many mentions on German TV and in newspapers about the crime involving the foreign suspect. ... He cited weekly media analyses conducted between January and April 2025 as evidence on the subject of crime. During this period, 168 TV reports on violent crime in Germany involving 146 suspects were examined, as well as 330 newspaper articles involving 263 suspects. ... Criminologist and sociologist Gina Wollinger calls this media distortion a "migrantization" of crime. The professor at the University of Applied Sciences for Police and Public Administration in North Rhine-Westphalia argued this was caused by what she called an overemphasis on culture. "A category that, in my perception, is only used when the perpetrators are non-German. Suddenly the question arises: 'Does it have something to do with culture?'" Wollinger stressed that crime has nothing to do with origin. "It's not migration history. It's not the passport or nationality," she said. "Rather, it's certain risk factors that stem primarily from poverty, lack of prospects and personal experiences of violence." When these factors are taken into account, one sees no difference between people with or without a migration background, she added. ...