I decided to have a look at the Fox News website to see how they were covering the world these days. They had a link to another website that had the headline, “Teacher, 28, ‘Gang raped by 9 Iraqi immigrants in Vienna attack'”.

My ‘fake news’ detector went off straight away, especially since it was from a website I had never heard of. I did a google news search and variations of the same headline came up from The Sun, The Mirror, The Daily Mail, The Daily Star, and the Metro. That list alone almost made me write it off as being complete bullshit but I read the Metro’s version and it doesn’t seem like something that has been completely fabricated.

I’m very much in favour of accepting refugees. The actions of these men don’t represent an entire culture and I don’t think it should have any effect on refugee policies.

What I’m concerned about is that I heard nothing about this in any of my usual papers (Guardian, Glasgow Herald, Independent, BBC, and FT). I’m trying to think of a reason why this story hasn’t been reported such as it not being newsworthy or they’re waiting until after the trial but none of them seem likely.

Have I put myself in a news bubble where stories that don’t support my world view are kept out of sight or is there something I’m missing?

Here are some other key statistics about sexual violence:

Approximately 85,000 women and 12,000 men are raped in England and Wales alone every year; that’s roughly 11 rapes (of adults alone) every hour.

https://rapecrisis.org.uk/statistics.php

Someone has to prioritise the news they print/transmit. Not all organisations choose the same priorities.

Do you think it should be reported in UK newspapers because the alleged accused were Iraqi immigrants? Or do you think all alleged gang rapes anywhere in the world should be reported in UK newspapers?

Btw the Metro is owned by the Daily Mail.

The Sun, The Mirror, The Daily Mail, The Daily Star, and the Metro.

What you’re listing there is a bunch of papers who very minimal journalism – they’ve picked a story, pre-written, from an international news media pretty much on the basis that its a headline that their readers will click. Don’t assume that the story showing up on a google search of those papers’ websites means they printed it.

I heard nothing about this in any of my usual papers (Guardian, Glasgow Herald, Independent, BBC, and FT)

Maybe they had some work today rather than feed an appetite for tittilation and spite.

It’s traditional on these threads to post predicting number of pages and a few predicted comments, often poster specific.
Instead, I’m going to predict ‘Number of people who will change their viewpoint by the end of all the rancour’

It’s none.

I haven’t even got a viewpoint to change.

I’m just interested in knowing why BruceWee thinks all UK newspapers should report an alleged gang rape abroad, ie because it involved alleged Iraqi immigrants, or because all gang rapes in foreign countries should be reported by all UK newspapers.

BruceWee,

There are plenty of news that lefties media do not report because they do not want to be proof wrong or they simple refuse to accept contradictory views.

There is nothing to be surprised of if that event actually happened because that is the nature of things when a nation starts to import other troubles and make it their own.

Yes, plenty of bubble news nowadays but you just have to go with your gut instinct and go for the ones that you feel is right.

I heard nothing about this in any of my usual papers (Guardian, Glasgow Herald, Independent, BBC, and FT

And Chewwy, with his brilliant Sherlock Holmes analytical mind, hits the nail firmly on the head…..they are all part of a “lefties media” conspiracy, including the FT!!!

(and presumably also the Daily Telegraph as it didn’t report the alleged incident either)

Personally I think there should be more newspaper articles highlighting what a pain in the arse economic migrants from Borneo can be. Unfortunately the lefties won’t allow it.

It may be real, the thing you need to ask yourself with these sorts of reports is

1. why am i being told? Vienna is neither local, nor is (sadly) this sort of crime particulalry rare. A shcoking number of women are raped every year.
2. Is the article seeking to link the event to a supposed wider issue, be that immigrants, religion, or violence
3. Is the emphasis on the story on the attackers and the lack of action rather then the victim and a successful prosecution or arrest.

I hadn’t heard about this either. I can’t decide if I think it should have been reported by the BBC or not but you’d think it would be more newsworthy than a footballer eating a pastie.

It was August 2016…

Perhaps the BEEB looked at it, and y’know did some research and found out that elements of the story were made up, or didn’t happen? Or that it wasn’t verifiable, who knows. There must be thousands of news items coming in all the time from News Agencies around the world, you’d have to do some sort of editing process.

The alleged attack (the defendants haven’t been convicted yet) occurred on New Year’s Eve 2015 and was widely reported at the time including on the BBC both on their website and on broadcast news. The case has now come to court.

Perhaps, alongside the report of a rape in a far off country most US citizens have never heard off, let alone visited, they should also print similar reports in similar detail of every American killed by gun-crime in the US on the same day. I am guessing they might need to add a few extra pages to the paper.

OP there is a lot of what amounts to censorship going on. A year ago when there was the Cologne New Years Eve “mass sexual assault” by asylum seekers the German press did not cover it all for a week. It was only when web based news services outside Germany picked it up they had no choice. It was a similar case when a young teenage volunteer at an asylum centre was murdered by a resident, main national channel did not cover it saying it was a “local story”

The “establishment” is very worried about what is happening and is trying to keep a lid on things. Pretty scary.

Well OP as you can see from the quantity of denial and whatboutery, not only are you in a media bubble, you are in the centre of it on STW. If the rapists had been a group of Trump supporters on holiday then all of a sudden the facts wouldn’t matter, the location wouldn’t matter – all would be looked past because the story would suit the audience here.

The fact that people can categorize anyone “right wing” thusly

Bearing in mind that many of these people are lazy as hell, before they would of had to actually physically go to a racist/xenophobic/ sexist (or whatever the topic of the day is) rally or to an actual meeting to spread there views with other like minded fools, now all they have to do is put down their pizza and raise a chubby thumb and they have an audience they can vent their fatty spleen at with out any effort on their part. They then get instant gratification of getting “likes” or comments from fellow fools.

and no one even pulls them up on it or bothers to add any kind of balance shows you how far left this forum is. STW socialist village – a nice little safe space where right wing views must be chased out.

News and politics are broken. We need a new political centre, but everyone just wants to dig deeper trenches that suit them.

@jimjam – the assault was reported at the time it took place, 14 months ago.

It’s your narrative that is broken.

Don’t agree with the rest of your post but I do agree with this –

News and politics are broken. We need a new political centre, but everyone just wants to dig deeper trenches that suit them.

The referendum has pushed everyone off the fence, the whole country has been split straight down the middle. Nice one, Dave. *slow handclap*

#Jambafacts
Reported on local German media on 1st of January but took until the 4th before the national news channels ran in-depth analysis of the attacks. Not quite the same as your interpretation of events.

Meldungen in regionalen Medien und Online-Plattformen wurden von den nationalen Medien erst mit Tagen Verzögerung aufgenommen.[18] Erste Berichte über einzelne sexuelle Übergriffe am Kölner Hauptbahnhof gab es am 1. Januar 2016 in den Onlineausgaben der Kölnischen Rundschau,[3] des Express,[19] des Kölner Stadtanzeigers[20] und in dem Regionalteil von Focus Online.[21] Am 2. Januar folgte eine Meldung der Nachrichtenagentur dpa mit der sehr niedrigen Prioritätsstufe vier, die unter anderem von den Onlineausgaben der Süddeutschen Zeitung[22] und RTL[23] aufgegriffen wurde. Eine breite überregionale Berichterstattung begann erst am 4. Januar. Diese Verzögerung wird zum Teil damit begründet, dass während des verlängerten Neujahrswochenendes nur reduzierte „Feiertagsschichten“ in den Redaktionen tätig gewesen seien.[24][25]

Am 4. Januar wurde in der 19-Uhr-Ausgabe der heute-Sendung des Zweiten Deutschen Fernsehens (ZDF) noch nicht über die Ereignisse in Köln berichtet. Der stellvertretende Chefredakteur Elmar Theveßen bezeichnete dies tags darauf als Fehler: „Die Nachrichtenlage war klar genug. Es war ein Versäumnis, dass die 19-Uhr-heute-Sendung die Vorfälle nicht wenigstens gemeldet hat.“ Man habe auf das Krisentreffen am Dienstag warten wollen, um Zeit für ergänzende Interviews zu gewinnen. Dies sei jedoch „eine klare Fehleinschätzung“ gewesen.[26] Die ARD-Tagesschau thematisierte die Übergriffe hingegen in ihrer 20-Uhr-Ausgabe am 4. Januar.[27] Am 5. Januar gab es um 19:20 Uhr ein ZDF spezial mit dem Thema „Was geschah in der Silvesternacht?“[28] Am gleichen Tag um 23:05 Uhr brachte das Erste die Sondersendung „Gewaltexzesse in Köln“.[29]

Einige Medien berichteten zunächst fälschlich, die Taten seien von 1000 Männern begangen worden.[30] Tatsächlich wurden die Taten aus einer mehr als 1000-köpfigen, fast ausschließlich aus jungen Männern bestehenden Menge heraus begangen.[31] Die Zahl der Täter war jedoch kleiner.

Member – Jambalaya

OP there is a lot of what amounts to censorship going on. …

The “establishment” is very worried about what is happening and is trying to keep a lid on things. Pretty scary.

Millions of refugees and migrants have arrived in Europe. Not all of them are nice people.

First, let me say again that this story has not changed my opinion of refugees. I still think we should be accepting more refugees and I believe that this is not widespread or that refugees should be the subject of special security requirements.

Just to clear something up, this attack happened in Vienna, not in the German cities where the well reported NYE attacks took place.

Second, none of the NYE attacks had the same characteristics where women were abducted, taken to a separate location, and raped by multiple attackers.

Third, the attackers ethnic background was Iraqi whereas the attackers in Germany were primarily North African.

Just because it’s a sexual assault in a bavarian city by immigrants doesn’t make it fair to say it’s already been covered. This was a completely separate incident, one I’ve never heard of before.

To say that it shouldn’t be reported because there a lot of rapes that don’t get reported is ignoring the accused share various characteristics. They share a nationality and they share a common background in that they are asylum seekers.

If we were to change these two characteristics then I think there would be no question that the story would receive international coverage both at the time of the attack and throughout the trial. Are you honestly trying to tell me that if, instead of nine Iraqi asylum seekers, it was nine French investment bankers it would not merit at least a mention on the BBC?

My concern is that we are moving beyond the point different newspapers put their own spin on a story to the point where different papers aren’t even reporting stories that won’t sit well with their target audience.

I’d hazard a guess that most of the 97000 rapists in England and Wales also share a common nationality.

Mass rapes take place all around the world, probably every day. You’re suggesting that this particular one is more newsworthy than the rest just because they are Iraqi and asylum seekers. You have to be able to see that you’re just jumping on this particular case due to your own prejudices?

@brucewee – unless there has been another rape in Vienna by nine Iraqis, all the current stories refer to the 2015 NYE event in Vienna. This is copied from Google’s results, it’s from the Breitbart site (I didn’t visit the site, not giving them that satisfaction, this is Google’s summary)

“Nine Iraqi asylum seekers have appeared in court in Vienna charged with the gang rape of a 28 year old teacher on New Years’ Eve 2015.”

Millions of native Europeans citizens in Europe. Not all of them are nice people.

Mass rapes take place all around the world, probably every day. You’re suggesting that this particular one is more newsworthy than the rest just because they are Iraqi and asylum seekers. You have to be able to see that you’re just jumping on this particular case due to your own prejudices?

You didn’t answer my question. Are you saying that if it was the exact same story but instead of nine Iraqi asylum seekers it was nine French investment bankers or nine American soldiers it wouldn’t get a mention?

@brucewee – unless there has been another rape in Vienna by nine Iraqis, all the current stories refer to the 2015 NYE event in Vienna. This is copied from Google’s results, it’s from the Breitbart site (I didn’t visit the site, not giving them that satisfaction, this is Google’s summary)

I don’t understand what you’re saying. My point was that all the coverage at the time was given to the mass attacks in Germany. This is a completely different attack in a different country with perpetrators of a different nationality. Various posters above seem to be confusing the two.

Going back to my French investment bankers substitution I would expect that story to have international coverage.

I would expect people would want an explanation. Are these people unique or are there in fact higher rates of reported rapes committed by investment bankers? If so is there something about the culture of investment bankers that makes them more likely to rape?

These are the questions I would want answered and the answer could be that this was a complete one-off and every statistic shows that investment bankers are no more likely to rape than anyone else.

Then, when someone tells me that all investment bankers are rapists based on this one story I can say, ‘No, there are no facts to back that up. It was a one off.’

If my papers don’t even tell me it happened how can I respond to a Daily Mail reader who is talking about an incident I have no clue about.

There was a Romanian style anti-corruption rally in Paris that made none of the national news channels but was well covered on Euronews.

A couple of hundred people die on the roads every month in France but unless the accident involve Brits it won’t make UK channels – if brits are killed its more likely to make UK news than if they were killed in Oxford.

Some things are under reported to prevent revolution, some are under reported because people don’t care. Some are over reported because they are emotive, politicised or in the case of the topic of this thread concern immigrants who happen to be Muslims from Iraq in Austria which is just what the gutter press love to publish but more discerning media perhaps put in the same not-worth-reporting category as the latest shooting in les quartiers nord de Marseille.

My concern is that we are moving beyond the point different newspapers put their own spin on a story to the point where different papers aren’t even reporting stories that won’t sit well with their target audience.

You mean that hasn’t already been happening for decades?

Newspapers only have so many pages, so what to print surely has to be an editorial decision. Of course they’re going to print stories that they think people who buy their rags are going to want to read, doing otherwise would be commercial suicide (and would mean that every paper was near-identical).

If my papers don’t even tell me it happened how can I respond to a Daily Mail reader who is talking about an incident I have no clue about.

Indeed, you’re perpetuating this, you have “usual papers” that print stories you want to read. If you want to fill the gap, get a Daily Mail to go with your Guardian.

(TBH, I’m amazed anyone with an Internet connection still buys a newspaper, the only time I’ve bought one in the last decade is for the crossword. There’s a vastly wider range of potentially more accurate news available right at your fingertips.)

@brucewee, the Vienna attack was covered at the time as were the German attacks. Your original post stated that there had been a recent attack in Vienna and that you couldn’t find any reports about it except in the right wing press/web sites. However as I showed in a previous post even those sites referred to the attack having taken place fourteen months ago.

the Vienna attack was covered at the time as were the German attacks.

If it was I didn’t see it. And it doesn’t change the fact that many people are under the impression that the two incidents are the same.

Your original post stated that there had been a recent attack in Vienna and that you couldn’t find any reports about it except in the right wing press/web sites.

I never said anything about a recent attack. Show me where I said it and I’ll try to clear up what I meant.

As far as I know the story is there because the trial has started and so the details are only just coming to light.

Your very first paragraph:

I decided to have a look at the Fox News website to see how they were covering the world these days. They had a link to another website that had the headline, “Teacher, 28, ‘Gang raped by 9 Iraqi immigrants in Vienna attack'”.

Then:

What I’m concerned about is that I heard nothing about this in any of my usual papers (Guardian, Glasgow Herald, Independent, BBC, and FT)..

I quoted the headline, I didn’t say there had been a recent attack but I can see how the confusion might have happened. I also read the story so I didn’t really think about what my post would look like if you only read the headline.

What I said afterwards was

I’m trying to think of a reason why this story hasn’t been reported such as it not being newsworthy or they’re waiting until after the trial but none of them seem likely.

Like I said, I didn’t take into account the fact that people wouldn’t read the story and therefore assumed they knew that the trial had just started. Given the fact that I would normally never visit any of these websites I should have taken that into account.

So what you’re saying is that the low quality rags with heavily biased sensationalised stories are a better reporting of news than the respectable quality news sources?

If I interpreted that wrong then I do apologise.

Anything that shows Muslim bad, immigrant bad, EU bad, Merkel bad, Farage good, will sell the Express. It’s not the fact that a rape happened that Express focus on, it the fact that a muslim immigrant did something bad that they report. That sells to their target audience.
I imagine they totally skip the point that the reason Syrian or Iraqi refugees were even in Vienna or Cologne might have something to do with UK and US bombing the c**p out of the middle east, and letting ISIS take hold.

Same with stories exaggerating a possible future light dusting of snow to become snowmageddon, and a blustery breeze becoming a hurricane. Weather chaos sells papers. Daily Express owner even admitted it.

Are you honestly trying to tell me that if, instead of nine Iraqi asylum seekers, it was nine French investment bankers it would not merit at least a mention on the BBC?

Well what makes a story newsworthy or “interesting” is what is the likelihood of it happening. For example a car bomb killing 40 people in Baghdad is far more likely than a car bomb killing 20 people in Buenos Aires. So I would expect the car bomb in Buenos Aires to be reported on the TV news but not necessarily the car bomb in Baghdad.

Yes I might be mildly interested in knowing why 9 French investment bankers were living in Vienna, and why they went out and gang raped a 28 year old teacher.

I’m not quite so baffled in figuring out why 9 Iraqis might be living in Vienna. I am also aware that Iraq, were Iraqi refugees come from, is a war zone, and whilst rape is globally widespread it is extraordinarily prevalent in war zones, which is hardly surprising – wars create people with fecked up heads, as they see the horrors of civil destruction, the corpses of children and the mutilated carcasses of old women, a complete lack of respect for human life and human dignity, widespread carnage carried out by those in authority and power, the complete breakdown of law and order. Right through human history wars have had a propensity to create rapists. I’m not sure that banking has quite that effect.

Having said that I wasn’t particularly interested in the story about the British banker who went to Hong Kong and raped and murdered a couple of women. I am generally not very interested in rape stories, I don’t find that reading about individual rape cases enhances my life very much. Nor am I in a position to do much about individual rape cases.

Perhaps, alongside the report of a rape in a far off country most US citizens have never heard off, let alone visited, they should also print similar reports in similar detail of every American killed by gun-crime in the US on the same day

It suits the current administration to highlight all the stuff being done by bad guys outside the US.