[Yetanfou]

There is also the difference of the scale of the problem, coupled with the polarisation in the media which has led to knee-jerk reactions when it comes to reporting on the issues - think of the way Dagens Nyheter (one of the bigger daily newspapers in Sweden) handled - or should I say covered up - the sexual abuse going on at the 'We are Sthlm' festivals. They sat on this news for 5 months until it was no longer tenable to do so due to the same kind of abuse happening in Cologne and elsewhere.

Think also of the infamous 'Code 291' used by the police for crimes where migrants are involved and the orders to keep these events out of the news 'because it might favour SD [1]'. This polarisation has led to an large reduction in trust in police and the justice department, as well as an all-time low trust level for journalists. The police should be politically neutral, just like the state media. Coloured reporting by the media is one thing, but a police force which acts out of political intent is an order of magnitude worse and something which is normally associated with failed states. Seen in that light the current police chief's clearly political stance is not just unfortunate but a real destabilising factor in Swedish society.

[1] SD or Sweden Democrats is a political party which wants to change the Swedish stance on migration, this party is shunned by all other parties and by most of the media while it averages around 20% of all votes.

[petriw]

This is just conspiracy stuff.

'We are Sthlm' was not judged newsworthy until the Cologne stuff. Now every potential groping at every festival is newsworthy, to the point where it's getting ridiculous.

And are you telling me the police literally has a code that singles out EVERY migrant related incident in their system? And that this would supposedly hide it from someone? Obviously that has worked out swimmingly and they really thought it would be 'secret'. Heck, coverup central DN has the very story being quoted on the Norwegian wiki article for Kode 291. Reading your replies in this thread I can understand why they'd want to keep stuff back at least until the situation settles.

Code 291, the fighting at asylum seeker housing, migrants raping migrants, the high costs of taking care of the migrants and so on... all of it has been reported on extensively in the mainstream media, heck, it's even been reported on extensively by SVT and SR.

You can literally live in the SVT/SR media bubble and know about all this.

[Yetanfou]

We are Sthlm was not judged newsworthy because the (Stockholm) redaction at DN thought it was a 'rumour kicked up by SD'. The police certainly thought it was newsworthy, as did those who reported the issue. Even the journalist who took the report initially thought it newsworthy.

I'm not telling you anything, I'll let the police (in this case through an article in DN (Dagens Nyheter) but a quick search on 'polisen kod 291' will give more pointers) do the talking. Since this is the Swedish police being discussed in a Swedish newspaper the article is in Swedish as well [1]. In this article (and elsewhere through $your_favourite_search_engine) you can read that 'every report where the plaintiff, the suspect or the person being interrogated is a migrant now has to be marked with the special code "291"' ('Varje anmälan där målsäganden, den misstänkte eller en förhörsperson är migrant måste nu märkas med den särskilda koden ”291”). A bit lower down in the same article you'll find that 'the code is used as working material for the daily situation report. The situation report has been declared secret and should not be made public' ('Koden används som arbetsmaterial för den dagliga lägesbilden. Den dagliga lägesbilden är hemligstämplad varför det som står där inte ska lämnas ut'), followed a bit further down by 'everything which relates to migrants has to be kept secret and my only conclusion is that due to some politically motivated reason they do not dare to show the truth as it is, according to a person working at the police communications department' ('Allt som snuddar vid invandringsfrågan ska hållas hemligt och min enda slutsats är att man av något slags politiska skäl inte vågar visa verkligheten som den är, säger en anställd på polisens kommunikationsavdelning.').

That the police was not that successful in keeping their secrets is another story altogether. This has nothing to do with [my] replies in this thread [2] and everything with the fact that censorship does not fit in a democratic society. All it does is create even more suspicion, as shown by the reactions to the recent gang rape on Gotland where the police refuse to give details on the suspects they apprehended.

In short, openness trumps censorship every time.

[1] http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/polisen-hemlighaller-fakta-... [2] ...and what exactly is wrong with my replies in this thread, please elaborate...