Europe has fallen
- Sky News Australia, YouTube, 15 July 2025
Hullo, welcome to Media Watch, I'm Linton Besser.
And tonight, we cross to a continent of white people under siege by black people and by brown people tearing at the very fabric of society with all manner of deadly weapons.
EUROPE HAS FALLEN
Anarchy in Europe as North African and Middle Eastern gangs senselessly terrorise innocent victims
- Sky News Australia, YouTube, 15 July 2025
That's the headline on a Sky News report published to YouTube last month which sounded the alarm on a migrant crime wave engulfing Europe, including in Spain where:
VOICEOVER: … a man with a baby was callously threatened by a knife wielding gang for simply walking down the street.
- Sky News Australia, YouTube, 15 July 2025
In the Catalonian capital meanwhile, the horrors continued:
VOICEOVER: … the cobblestone laneways are no longer filled with people enjoying their vacations, but with hundreds of Muslim men chanting.
- Sky News Australia, YouTube, 15 July 2025
Better cancel your trip to France too, because over there it's even worse:
VOICEOVER: France is also in a migration mess with violence running rampant in the streets, like at the Fête de la Musique last month, where hundreds of young people were stabbed with syringes …
- Sky News Australia, YouTube, 15 July 2025
Hundreds stabbed with syringes? And Sky News selected a very authoritative expert to point out all the black people:
VOICEOVER: Online commentators were in shock with the footage, with this person saying
'This is France?! This looks like Ghana, not France.'
- Sky News Australia, YouTube, 15 July 2025
This exquisitely nuanced piece garnered almost 40,000 comments, many of which were just as erudite, linking the video's many crimes not just with our well-known Jewish overlords but also to the 'great replacement' theory which motivated the 2019 Christchurch massacre.
Although, scattered through the vitriol, a handful of Sky's audience had a somewhat different analysis:
the biggest race baiting video I've seen so far on these YouTube streets lol
- Sky News Australia, YouTube comment, @RenzelYoung, 27 July 2025
Which was a bit like stepping back out of the looking glass because this video has to be one of the most appalling and incendiary things I've seen in journalism for a very long time which, it should also be said, was also wildly wrong from the very first frame.
This is not police beating back a violent migrant gang, but police beating back a violent mob of far-right vigilantes.
And this video of a man threatened by a knife was in fact filmed in 2023, with no evidence the group was a 'migrant gang'.
Likewise this video, rather than a migrant 'take over' of Barcelona, it captures Ashura, an annual day of commemoration for the Islamic faith.
And on it goes.
The mass syringe attack was in fact a mass panic triggered by a social media hoax with not a single confirmed case, and many of the reports of syringe stabbings in several locations quickly attributed not to migrants but mosquitos.
Oh, and this vision is not a migrant takeover either, as dramatic as it might look, but the aftermath of the UEFA Champions League final in which fans clashed with each other and with les flics.
As for this appalling internet comment, was it taken from a witness at the scene or an expert in migrant crime?
Don't be silly, it's just a mean, deliberately racist remark from some far-right American keyboard warrior.
And is Spain, to take one of Sky News' case studies, actually grappling with a surge of migrant-driven crime?
Not even close. Whatever angst migration might be causing in the country, Spain's Interior Minister explained last month that:
"Crime is not on the rise, nor is it linked to migration," …
Despite a 54% rise in foreign residents between 2011 and 2024, crime has dropped seven percentage points, with hate crimes down 13.8% last year and Spain among the world's 25 safest nations … (Spain's Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska)
- Reuters, 17 July 2025
And who is the journalist behind this call to arms?
Her name is Carla Efstratiou, who has a very busy social media feed full of charming observations such as when she took a stroll through a pro-Palestinian student protest:
CARLA EFSTRATIOU: … I swear it smells here, there is a definite stench … I feel like I'm getting rabies just being here …
- Go Woke Go Broke, TikTok, 6 May 2024
And why has she been given license to produce this delightful contribution to human advancement?
Read the numbers, baby. 3.6 million views.
Kerrr-ching.
In fact, Carla's contribution to the Sky News catalogue has attracted oh, just a few eyeballs. 7.6 million to be precise, just for this little selection, uploaded in the past few months.
But, late on Friday, after receiving our questions, Sky News deleted Carla's nine-minute 'Anarchy in Europe' magnum opus, posting not a 'correction' of course but a 'clarification'.
Carla declined to offer us a comment and Sky News would not answer questions about whether its journalist had been provided any guidance, support or editorial direction in the preparation of her package.
A spokesperson told us:
Sky News Australia rejects the characterisation of the online video by Media Watch but acknowledges that several elements lacked appropriate editorial context.
- Email, Sky News Australia Spokesperson, 1 August 2025
Because that's all that was missing, just the context.
And what was the video's headline again?
Ah yes, 'Europe Has Fallen'.
No it hasn't, Carla and co.
What has fallen however, what has plummeted through the floor in this piece of drivel, is any sense of responsibility and the public interest.
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