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.”







