[mschuster91]

Until 2017 this actually was a rule (not a legally binding, just the "honor code") for media, but this got changed after the AfD and other Nazis whined for years that police and media would not "tell the truth" about migrant crimes, "suppress" or "hide" them (https://www.migazin.de/2017/03/24/presserat-aendert-richtlin...).

A very sad day for our society.

[davrosthedalek]

Indeed.

Every time the AfD is mentioned, I have to remember this: https://politicalbeauty.de/mahnmal.html, and it makes it a little bit better.

[choko]

Are you saying that facts should be suppressed because someone might use them the wrong way? Serious question.

[mschuster91]

Journalism should report the relevant facts to a case. And the nationality/ethnicity/skin color rarely is a relevant fact in a criminal case, with the notable exception of racist-motivated or ethnic conflict (e.g. Kurds vs Turks) crimes.

For "everyday" crimes, think of pub brawls, petty theft, robberies, sexual misconduct of all forms, the ethnicity is absolutely irrelevant and its mention by police/media is only likely to further racial hatred.

[scotty79]

Would you like to also know if a perpetrator was left-handed or ginger or blood type A?

No. Because that doesn't matter. Just as ethnicity doesn't matter. Criminal is a criminal.

[nmfisher]

Governments are able to choose which nationalities are allowed entry via immigration policy.

Some might find criminal representation very relevant to that policy decision. Perhaps you do not. That’s certainly your prerogative. But outright denying the relevance is absurd.

[davrosthedalek]

So make anonymized statistics about it. The nationality of any given individual who is alleged to have committed a crime, is not relevant.

[read_if_gay_]

And newspapers should report on those statistics then? That’s probably a lot more explosive than reporting individual cases.

[nmfisher]

That I agree with.

[scotty79]

I'm not claiming it itrelevant to law enforcement. It's irrelevant to (or shoudld be irrelevant to bon-racist) news recipient.

[kreft]

If it turns out left handed people are significantly overrepresented in crime statistics, then yes, that would be interesting to know. Either something is wrong with the system or with left handed people. This notion of withholding information from voting adults just because it doesn't further a particular social engineering agenda is repulsive to be honest.

[davrosthedalek]

Oh come on, your argument is self defeating. If doxxing individuals would be the only way for a voter to learn "if left handed people are significantly overrepresented", you would need to make all properties of everyone public, because there could be significant overrepresentation for any property.

And if you already know that "left handed people are significantly overrepresented" from some other source, you don't have to make the information public for these cases -- you know it already. Probably from a proper statistic made by the government. Not by counting a media-reported incident also reported the person to be left-handed.

[read_if_gay_]

And your argument is a mix of a strawman and taking GP’s point ad absurdum. Not withholding information doesn’t equate to doxxing, and just because you can’t find out all the correlations doesn’t mean you shouldn’t even try to find any in the first place.

[refurb]

But we're discussing an article that specifically calls out the researchers ethnicity and the fact they are immigrants.

Or are you saying we should only talk about a person's ethnicity when it's in a positive light?

Maybe this article should have just said "a German husband-and-wife dream team"?

[mschuster91]

> Or are you saying we should only talk about a person's ethnicity when it's in a positive light?

Yes, because integration can only work when people have role models to look up to. This is also why (even if she's as "top cop" as it can get) the appointment of Kamala Harris is so important, or Barack Obama winning in 2008 - it is a "ceiling breaker" event, it shows to people that even if one is not part of the "usual old boys club" it is possible to achieve success.

Painting ethnicity in a negative light, especially when it's totally unrelated and irrelevant, however was judged as "potentially inciting or furthering racial division" in German media codex.

[davrosthedalek]

If they wouldn't haven given an interview, or otherwise indicated that they want the world to know, it's nobodies business which nationality they are, or that they are husband and wife. It's simple as that.

[davrosthedalek]

Well, your personal information are facts too. Would you like them posted? As long as the crimes are only alleged, not proven, there is no question to me that the interest of the people at large is second to the privacy protection of the suspects.