Disclosure of perpetrator origin in crime news: Changing practices in journalism after populist accusations?

Abstract

If news reports on crime disclose the ethnic or national origin of suspects or perpetrators, severe consequences for audience stereotypes and public policy may arise. Thus, many professional codices advise journalists to limit origin disclosure to rare exceptions. Right-wing populists have, however, accused news media of obfuscating the ‘true dimension’ of immigrant crime. Conducting a content analysis of N = 10,943 crime reports released between 2013 and 2021 by 10 German newspapers, we investigated how journalists reacted to such attempted political influence. Findings show a massively increased frequency of news reports that included explicit or implicit cues to suspects’ or perpetrators’ origin, with a peak in 2018 and a subsequent decline in 2021. We interpret the results as a time-dependent effect of populist anti-media agitation that emerged after a large immigration wave to Germany in 2015 and 2016 but lost much of its impact a few years later, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Implications for journalism theory and ethics are discussed.