Czech media outlet reprints old, misleading information about Roma in UK

News server Novinky.cz has published an article with the headline "French town doesn’t want to bury Romani child who didn’t pay taxes" that includes information more than a year old about the situation in the suburb of Sheffield in England. As in its previous reporting, the news server’s current reporting is silent as to the results of a police investigation into the matter, which means the information it has now (re)published is extremely misleading.

"The Guardian has also mentioned a news item from the tabloid paper The Daily Express according to which the Romani teenagers offered to sell a child to the owner of a local shop for GBP 250. Local residents, according to The Guardian, have welcomed the fact that the authorities have begun taking an interest in their problems," news server Novinky.cz reported on 4 January 2015, without providing further details.

The passage cited above was taken word for word from a news item published by the Czech News Agency more than a year ago, but only quotes part of the information reported at the time. The full citation reads: "The Guardian has also mentioned a news item from the tabloid paper The Daily Express according to which the Romani teenagers offered to sell a child to the owner of a local shop for GBP 250. Police emphasized that they have thoroughly investigated the speculations about the sale of a child and found no evidence that any children had disappeared in the Page Hall area. According to a police spokesperson this could have been a ‘pathetic joke’."

News server Novinky.cz, just as it did a year ago, has completely left out the police information that there is no evidence of a child having been sold. Another question is why that section of the text was added to a report about recent events in France.  

The rest of the Novinky.cz news report is otherwise totally identical to the news item released on the recent tragedy in France by the Czech News Agency. The ROMEA organization contacted news server Novinky.cz on Sunday morning to to correct the manipulative, misleading information in its article.

As of Sunday evening the editors had not responded to ROMEA’s e-mail and had not published a correction. News server Romea.cz previously responded to the misleading information published by news server Novinky.cz a year ago by reporting in detail on the situation in the suburb of Sheffield.

For more information about this and other instances of Czech media misbehavior in reporting on Romani people, see the ROMEA organization’s recent report on this issue.