Even though some 7.3 million foreigners currently live in Germany, migrant life still gets a bad rap in the media. Public broadcasters met in Berlin recently to discuss ways of combating the cliches. If German television is anything to go by, Muslim life is still shackled by tradition and overshadowed by crime. Its image took an even steeper downward plunge after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, said Fritz Pleitgen, director of German public broadcaster WDR.  

But migrant life isn't all bad news, he insisted -- and it's high time television delivered the broader picture. 

"Honor killings and arranged marriages make more of a splash in the media that differentiated depictions of normal life among migrants," Pleitgen said.

After all, contemporary Germany is increasing becoming a proverbial melting pot. Cultural borders have never been more blurred -- one in six marriages is inter-cultural and one in four children born in Germany has at least one non-German parent.