FLEMISH NEWS SITE PUBLISHES CRIME STORIES ASSUMING FOREIGN NATIONALITY OF PERPETRATORS

A complaint by EUJS, European Union of Jewish Students, to a reporter at the outlet Sceptr requesting him to stop purposely framing migrants as criminals has been left without any answers.

Sceptr, an alternative media site covering news in Belgium and the Netherlands, regularly handpicks articles on crimes allegedly committed by migrants, even when there is no evidence that the perpetrators are foreigners. The site rewrites articles from other newspapers in a way that discredits migrants without providing any evidence. The word allochtoon (“foreigner”) is used in almost all headlines to describe the criminal as a non-Belgian national.

It seems that for Tom Lallemand, the main author of the “Migration and integration” section, “foreign-sounding” names are enough to claim that the people who committed the crime are migrants.

EUJS, GTTO partner, has sent a complaint to Tom Lallemand highlighting this unethical approach. Mentioning the nationality when it is not necessary might cause an overestimate of the proportion of the crimes committed by foreigners, as Sceptr does, which in turn might lead to stereotyping and discrimination.

At the time of writing, Tom Lallemand has not replied to the complaint by EUJS.