Western TV and Crimes against Foreigners in East Germany

Abstract

Following reunification, anti-foreigner crimes rose sharply in the former GDR. Using countylevel data for the early 1990s, we study if regional access to Western TV, i.e. non-socialist media, prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall had an impact on regional levels of serious antiforeigner crime (murder and arson) in East Germany. We find that East German counties with no access to Western TV exhibit higher rates of such crimes, as in the ’valley of the clueless’ around Dresden. This crime-attenuating effect of Western TV proves robust in a battery of robustness checks and underscores the importance of media for anti-foreigner attitudes and crimes well before the rise of the internet and social media.