Reading the Italian newspapers in this area whenever something negative is reported they identify the nationality of the person. Such as, "The xxxx driver was driving intoxicated." Is this common throughout Italy? Europe?

I've noticed that too. For example, recently a young woman was killed on the Rome metro when another young woman put an umbrella point through her eye. On both the TV news and the print media they kept mentioning that the killer was Romanian and couched the news reporting in terms of an "extracomunitara" who killed an Italian girl. They even showed relatives of the dead girl on TV saying very negative things about "Romanians". Not sure how that helps the situation.

No wonder so many Italians who I meet seem to believe that "extracomunitari" are mostly criminals.

It's normal in the UK too! In fact it used to be that colour was only mentioned if the person wasn't white! Now they will actually state " a white male/female " but they didn't always.

It's also ugly that the pposite never happens, or hardly happens. When an immigrant or foreigners is the victim of a crime or acts to prevent a crime or to save someone in any other way, the fact that this person is a foreigner is not often mentioned in the titles.