How German media reveals its bias when foreigners commit crimes
A shocking incident occurred in Hamburg last Friday, when a 39-year-old woman – reportedly
suffering from severe mental health issues
– injured 18 people at the city's main railway station in a mass stabbing attack.
Four of the victims – three women and one man – sustained what were initially described as life-threatening injuries. Updated reports said all 18 victims were in a stable condition and recovering well.
The incident has raised questions about bias is German media reporting.
In Germany the ethnicity of attackers only seems to be highlighted when they are foreigners. In this case, the heroic actions of a Syrian refugee were also largely ignored.
A heroic act
The number of victims of the Hamburg attack – and the severity of their injuries – could easily have been worse, if not for the courage and heroism of two men who happened to be on the scene.
When Muhammad Al Muhammad, 19, saw people on the platform running away from a woman wielding a knife, he chose to run in the opposite direction in other words towards the woman to try and stop her, according to
reporting by
Der Spiegel
.
A second man, reportedly of Chechen origin, kicked the attacker in the knee, causing her to fall and allowing Muhammad to restrain her effectively.
Muhammad comes from Aleppo and arrived in Germany in 2022.
Commenting on the story for
Taz
, journalist Gilda Sahebi made a point of highlighting his background.
Sahebi wrote
: 'The political and public debate is now so dripping with racist toxicity spread by a far-right party and its influencers in the media and on social media, but also by democratic political and media actors, that it is necessary to tell the story of Muhammad Al Muhammad.'
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Immigrants more often portrayed as villains in German media
According to police statistics for 2023, native Germans were the suspects or perpetrators in 66.7 percent of violent crimes.
In the same year, Germany's television news stations devoted 84.2 percent of its reporting on violent crimes to cases in which a foreigner had been identified as a suspect, according to analysis by Dr. Thomas Hestermann at Hochschule Macromedia in Hamburg.
Hestermann found the same bias in German print media, with 82 percent of its violent crime coverage focused on foreign perpetrators.
READ ALSO:
Why experts say Germany's rising crime rate is misleading
To give a more recent example: in February, an immigrant from Afghanistan
drove into a crowd in Munich
. In March, a German man
drove into a crowd in Mannheim
.
Two nearly identical crimes, but media analysis indicates that the former received
almost twice as much attention
as the latter.
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What are the rules on crime reporting in Germany?
In recent years, the
Deutsche Presserat
(German Press Council) has repeatedly updated its guidelines in an attempt to address long-standing concerns about potential discrimination and bias in crime reporting.
According to the guidelines, the media should avoid mentioning the ethnicity, religion, or other minority status of suspects or perpetrators unless there is a justified public interest.
The guideline is rarely followed in practice, however, with many editors and journalists reluctant to keep this information from the public.
Critics argue that omitting such information can create suspicion among readers and lead to accusations of a lack of transparency or censorship. In response, campaigners have suggested that the ethnicity and religion of all suspects should be included in reports – so far without success.
As a result, the words '
Einwanderer
' (immigrant) or
"Ausländer"
(foreigner) appear alongside the words
"Gewaltverbrechen"
(violent crime) with wildly disproportionate regularity.
How was the case resolved in Hamburg?
The person who attacked so many people with a knife at Hamburg Main Station is in police custody.
A police spokesman at the scene was quick to reassure reporters that there did not appear to be any political motive for the attack. Instead, he said, the police were 'pursuing the theory that the suspect may have been experiencing a psychological emergency.'
While it is absolutely right to hope that she receives the medical care and attention she needs, it is also legitimate to wonder whether the police and the German media would have shown such understanding if the perpetrator had been a man from Syria or Afghanistan.
According to
reports in
Bild
, Muhammad Al Muhammad has become the target of online disinformation campaigns. Despite his heroism – and public expressions of gratitude from the police – numerous fake images that cast doubt on his existence and fuel and conspiracy theories are already circulating on social media.
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