German media under fire for exaggerating the portrayal of foreign crimes
A long-term study reveals that German media greatly exaggerates the coverage of crimes involving foreign suspects, creating a distorted public impression. According to research conducted by Professor Thomas Histerman from Macromedia University in Hamburg, foreign suspects are mentioned in news reports at a rate three times their actual proportion in police crime statistics. The results, published as part of the 'Media Integration Service' project, show that this imbalance reached its peak in 2025.
Histerman, who has been tracking media coverage of immigration and crime issues since 2007, stated that the ethnic origin or background of suspects was hardly mentioned in 2014. However, this changed drastically after 2015, when around a million refugees arrived in Germany, most of whom were fleeing the war in Syria. Histerman said, "Since then, we have seen a sharp distortion in the way crime and immigration are portrayed." He warned that the majority of people rely on the media to form their opinions about violence and safety, making biased coverage directly influence public opinion.
To explain this issue, Hesterman pointed to two similar incidents that occurred in the cities of Munich and Mannheim in 2025. In Munich, a young man from Afghanistan drove his car into a crowd, killing two people, and in Mannheim, a German man did the same, also killing two people. However, the difference in media coverage was clear — the national channel ARD aired a special program during prime time about the Munich attack, but did not allocate any similar coverage to the Mannheim attack. Hesterman stated, 'There were reports twice as many about the crime committed by the foreign suspect,' considering this a stark evidence of media bias.
Heisterman explained that this pattern does not always stem from bad intentions, but often from immediate journalistic reactions. He said, "Editors make quick decisions based on intuition, but these decisions collectively form a pattern of coverage that aligns with right-wing populist narratives." His team's analysis of 168 television reports and 330 journalistic articles showed that there is not much difference between conservative newspapers like Die Welt and leftist ones like taz — both exaggeratedly highlighted foreign suspects when mentioning origin.
Crime scientist and sociologist Gina Vollinger from the University of Applied Sciences for Police and Public Administration in North Rhine-Westphalia describes this phenomenon as the 'criminalization of migrants' in the media. She believes that the media only associates violence with culture when the suspects are non-Germans. She stated, 'It's not about nationality or migration background, but factors like poverty, lack of opportunities, and experiences of violence.' Both Heistermann and Vollinger called for diversifying newsrooms and making them more inclusive to improve coverage accuracy and representation. Heistermann concluded, 'When voices from different cultural backgrounds are reflected in the editorial rooms, the image of society becomes more realistic and fair.'