Death,
lies and migration fears in Germany
Syrian
refugee’s death caused an outcry. But no one checked to see if it
was true.
By MATTHEW
KARNITSCHNIG 1/28/16, 6:07 PM CET Updated 1/28/16, 7:32 PM CET
http://www.politico.eu/article/death-lies-and-migration-fears-in-germany-dead-syrian-refugee-asylum/
BERLIN — The story
had all the makings of a major scandal: A 24-year-old Syrian refugee,
riven with flu and fever, succumbed in the small hours of Wednesday
after days spent waiting for help in the cold outside Berlin’s
notorious refugee center.
There was just one
problem: There was no body.
A volunteer aid
worker told police late Wednesday he had made up the story. By then,
the damage was done. What he had portrayed as an eyewitness account
of the refugee’s plight spread like wildfire over Facebook. At the
end of a string of dispatches, the aid worker reported that the
Syrian had died of heart failure in an ambulance on the way to
hospital.
German media seized
on the Dickensian tale early Wednesday. Social media exploded in
outrage. In the U.K., the Daily Mail ran the headline: “Migrant
dies after queueing for DAYS outside overworked registration offices
in Berlin.”
By mid-morning,
scores of mourners had gathered near the refugee center, known by its
German acronym Lageso, to light candles and lay flowers at a
makeshift memorial.
A local aid group
printed a black-bordered death announcement dripping with pathos.
“You survived so
much,” it read. “You didn’t survive Lageso …We cry.”
The
biggest casualty in the affair might be the media’s credibility;
most Germans already think the press has a one-sided view of the
refugee crisis.
The episode is
emblematic of Germany’s tortured public debate over the refugee
crisis. What was initially heralded as a Wilkommenskultur, or culture
of welcome, in the early fall, quickly shifted into a fear of being
overrun by foreign masses, followed by guilt that many refugees
weren’t being treated well.
For pro-refugee
groups, the supposed death seemed to confirm their persistent
warnings over dire conditions in some of the refugee centers. Lageso,
in particular, had become synonymous with bureaucratic ineptitude.
Every day, hundreds of refugees — including many small children and
their mothers — were forced to queue in the cold outside Lageso’s
dingy headquarters to receive basic services.
The report of the
dead Syrian fit perfectly into the long-running narrative about
Lageso’s dysfunction.
For the swelling
ranks of German populists and nationalists, the affair served as an
affirmation of their suspicion that the aid groups have a hidden
political agenda.
Yet the biggest
casualty in the affair might be the media’s credibility; most
Germans already think the press has a one-sided view of the refugee
crisis. Just weeks after underreporting and downplaying reports of
mass sexual assaults on New Year’s Eve in Cologne, some of the very
same outlets seized on the Lageso story with missionary zeal.
Along the way, they
ignored many of the basic tenets of responsible reporting. Not only
did the press not wait for official confirmation of the death, they
also implied that the man died from being left out in the cold.
Usually in such cases, the media leave it to a medical examiner to
determine the cause of death, especially when it involves such a
sensitive case as this one.
Instead of waiting,
the German press relied on a spokeswoman for a local aid group, known
as Moabit Hilft, and what turned out to be a fictitious Facebook
chat. While most outlets mentioned that authorities had yet to
confirm the account, they didn’t stress the point.
A
day later, few in the press were apologetic. “It fit into the
picture,” explained a news anchor on German radio’s main news
program.
Der Spiegel’s
online version, for example, one of most-read German-language sites,
led with the story during the busy lunch hour, quoting an aid worker
who said the man’s death was “a direct result of the long wait at
Lageso.” The piece, which catalogued the history of problems at the
refugee center, didn’t mention there was no official confirmation
of the death until more than halfway through.
Matthias Streitz,
managing editor at Spiegel Online, said: “In our coverage of the
alleged death at Lageso, we were careful from the start to emphasize
that this story was based on two connected sources only — a
Facebook post and an interview with a Moabit Hilft representative —
and official confirmation was lacking.”
“The story was
judged newsworthy even at this early stage because the situation at
Lageso has long been notorious and the report of a deadly incident
seemed entirely plausible. In retrospect, we should have emphasized
our doubts even stronger (headline wording included), and publishing
this story on the very top position of our page, if only for an hour,
now looks like a misjudgement. We’ve discussed this at some length
internally and will strive to be more careful in comparable
situations.”
Dailies including
Die Welt — owned by Axel Springer, which co-owns POLITICO Europe —
and public television and radio ran with the story as well. Some
outlets featured video interviews with indignant aid workers
demanding consequences.
A day later, few in
the press were apologetic. “It fit into the picture,” explained a
news anchor on German radio’s main news program.
The real culprits,
Germany’s media agreed, were the aid worker and the charity,
neither of which had apologized.
Authors:
Matthew Karnitschnig
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