The reporting by the leading German media during the refugee crisis in 2015 and 2016 has not been balanced according to a new survey. A group of researchers from the Mainz journalism Professor Marcus Maurer invalidated by the data presented, at the same time, the Thesis that the mainstream media have hidden the problematic aspects of immigration. While television and national Newspapers have been to Germany, refugees, initially mostly very positive, would have to pay the same editors in the sharp rise in Immigrants is mostly a risk, and only rarely a Chance for Germany to be seen.

“We have very mixed findings,” said Maurer of the Evangelical press service. For the journal “journalism,” published a work he had studied with his colleagues, reports the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”, “süddeutsche Zeitung” and the “image” and the main news broadcasts of ARD, ZDF and RTL for the period from may 2015 to January 2016.

“Tagesschau” shows women and children

In the study were able to refute the scientists from the Institute of journalism of the Mainz Johannes-Gutenberg-University of the accusation, the media would have shown the composition of the refugees is wrong and disproportionately on women and children reported. This criticism, to meet alone on the “Tagesschau”. Their reporting had given “actually predominantly under the impression that it was the immigrants, especially women and children”.

The crime of immigrants has been addressed in 2015, comparatively little of the media. After the sexual Assault on women in the new year’s eve in Cologne has changed this, however, abruptly and reversed. Even without taking into account the operations in Cologne, in the studied media in January 2016, twice as many reports of other crimes committed by immigrants, such as in the entire year of 2015.

All media with the exception of the “image” of the researchers agree that the Germany-arrived refugees were represented in the year 2015, initially almost exclusively positive. Especially strongly this tendency is to be seen in the coverage of the three TV stations. Only in the “image” would have kept the positive and negative representations of refugees in balance. According to the decision of German Chancellor Angela Merkel in September 2015, to close the German borders to asylum seekers, have diminished the “media euphoria” noticeably.