The paper reviews how online news portals in Lithuania reported on the Syrian refugee crisis in 2016-2019. I argue that sensationalized negative narratives were given preference to unbiased and fact-checked stories. This was due to a number of factors: predominantly negative public opinion, prominent anti-refugee politicians, and the lack of high-profile Muslim figures in Lithuania. Furthermore, as time went on and it became apparent that Lithuania would only be accepting a small number of refugees and thus the fears of a “refugee invasion” and Islamization proved to be unfounded, the media reporting became marginally more balanced and the number of reports reduced dramatically; however, the reporting did not converge fully to accurately depict the reality of the refugee crisis in Lithuania.
