In one entire year, IPSO received 8000 discrimination complaints - but upheld only one. In a time of increasing antisemitism, Islamophobia and overall racist and discriminatory acts across the United Kingdom, Europe and around the world, we find this lack of oversight over this kind of reporting to be both troubling, and telling. Today, Media Diversity Institute and Hacked Off are calling on the Independent Press Standards Organisation to end this #RacismInThePress, and start taking complaints of racism and discrimination more seriously. Please circulate their letter using the hashtag #RacismInThePress. You can read the full open letter on the Media Diversified's website, and you can sign the petition here! Update from MDI: MDI has received more than one hundred signatures from…

A complaint by EFOMW requesting the Belgian news outlet 7sur7 remove photos with Nazi insignias from an article is ignored by the editors. The article appeared on 7sur7 provided a platform for Nazi symbols and to the opinion of a man who defines himself as a Hitler fan.

The EUJS has reacted to an Islamophobic statement by the Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Karin Kneissl. At the opening conference of the Slovakian Chairmanship of the OSCE in February, which focused on the topic of antisemitism, Karin Kneissl, foreign minister in Austria's right wing, nationalist coalition government, stated that if we speak of antisemitism we should look to Muslims and immigrants.

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

In December 2018, the centrist francophone Belgian daily La Libre Belgique and its sister publication DH published a video from the so-called “March Against Marrakech” on their websites. This video features extreme-right protesters shouting anti-Muslim hate and threatening violence. Disturbingly, no editorial explanation contextualising the video and the decision to publish it was present alongside the footage itself.

On 17th December, Francophone Belgian website 7sur7 reported that Toblerone chocolate received its halal certification in April 2018. The article’s sensationalist title – “What you probably did not know about Toblerone” – implies that the owner of the brand, the US food group Mondelez, is involved in a secret conspiracy to please Muslim buyers to the detriment of others. Although Toblerone’s recipe had not actually changed, the article maintains this accusatory tone by using words that imply conspiracy, like “in all discretion” and “did not want to reveal”.

The front cover of the latest issue of Paris Match, a leading news and entertainment weekly, used a photo of Hervé Lalin, known as “Hervé Ryssen”, to represent the gilets jaunes protests sweeping across France. A self-described ‘racist’ and ‘anti-Semite’, Ryssens is a convicted criminal and member of National Republican Movement – an extreme-right party that split from Marine Le Pen’s National Front in 1999. Shockingly, Paris Match does not identify him as such.

On November 15th British populist news outlet Politicalite published an article titled: “Opinion: If We Want To Stop Child Abuse, We Need To BAN Immigration From Pakistan.” The piece was authored by Councillor Ryan Macpherson, who is an independent councillor on Ashford Borough Council in Kent. The article focusses on child abuse in Pakistan, mainly of street children, and claims that due to high levels of child abuse in the country, Pakistani’s (mainly men) should not be allowed into the UK. The article has both xenophobic and Islamophobic undertones.

Le Vif, the leading weekly magazine of francophone Belgium, republished an article titled ‘Macron in Molenbeek’ on its website. This article focuses on the roundtable attended by the Macrons, the queen and king of Belgium with various residents of the area. While most participants are identified by their profession, the article describes one as "a young veiled woman."

A vile hate-filled website is in the process of being taken down, after GTTO partner Licra and other NGOs in France have prompted a legal action against it.

Rod Liddle wrote a column for British newspaper The Sunday Times discussing the recent release of Anjem Choudary, who was in prison for inviting support for the Islamic State. In the piece, Liddle urges “British Islamists” to “blow themselves up – somewhere a decent distance away from where the rest of us live. Tower Hamlets, for example.” Tower Hamlets is one of the UK’s most diverse boroughs, with an estimated 38% of Muslim residents and an established Bangladeshi community.

On 19th September 2018, Belgium’s leading progressive francophone daily Le Soir published a video-guide to the upcoming elections. Among other information, their video claimed that around 130,000 foreign citizens have been fraudulently registered as voters.

Makelio.gr, which markets itself as an 'independent' online newspaper in Greece, published a news story about the case of suspected cholera on an ASL Airlines flight from Algeria to France. Although the artcle itself uses neutral language, its title is a perfect example of hate speech.

ART Channel, a private regional TV network in Greece uncritically “examined” anti-Muslim fake news published by a far-right newspaper during a talk-show. During the show, the presenter, the panellists and a third-party legal expert repeated Eleftheri Ora’s false claims that an Orthodox Church in the Votanikos area of Athens had been demolished to build a Mosque.

Eleftheri Ora, an extreme-right newspaper in Greece, continues to vilify Muslims in its articles. In a recent front-page piece, the newspaper misleadingly reported that a Greek Orthodox Church in Vottanikos Athens had been knocked-down to make space for the construction of a mosque.