Germany: hostility and threats

The working environment for journalists in Germany is, on the whole, good. However, journalists are frequently subject to threats and attacks, especially when covering or researching the country’s far-right scene or the "Querdenker" (lateral thinkers) milieu. While Germany’s public service broadcasters can rely on funding from licence fees, more and more newspapers are fighting for survival and ever fewer have their own full editorial staff.

In recent years, there have been repeated attacks against media outlets and journalists in Germany. Pictured here: the editorial offices of the Lausitzer Rundschau newspaper in Spremberg.

In the 2023 Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index, Germany dropped eight places to rank 21. This is mainly owing to the fact that there were no less than 80 physical attacks against journalists in 2021, with that figure rising to 103 in 2022 – the highest level since documentation began in 2013. Around two-thirds of these incidents occurred during protests by members of the lateral thinkers (Querdenker) movement against the government’s Covid-19 containment measures, which were regularly infiltrated by violent neo-Nazis and far right groups. Verbal attacks and attempts to intimidate journalists – mainly by far-right groups – also remain a problem.

Several laws introduced in recent years also pose a threat to freedom of the press in Germany, according to Reporters Without Borders. These include the BND Act, which authorises the German Foreign Intelligence Service (BND) to conduct surveillance of foreign journalists outside the country. Reporters Without Borders filed a second constitutional complaint against the law at the beginning of 2023 on the grounds that the recently reformed version of this law was still inadequate.

Fact checks and dialogue aimed at building trust

The term “Lügenpresse” (lying press) was already nominated “Unwort des Jahres” (bad word of the year) in Germany in 2014. It was around that time, when the war first broke out in eastern Ukraine, that hostility towards journalists became more noticeable, initially in the form of online comments and letters to the editor. The refugee crisis in 2015, the entry of the right-wing populist AfD into the Bundestag in 2017 and the Covid-19 pandemic led to growing criticism of media coverage of these developments from certain sections of society.

Even though studies show that the majority of Germans still trust the media, many outlets are trying to boost their credibility through measures such as introducing fact checks, voluntary corrections or engaging more with their audiences. At the same time, journalists face a growing counter-public on the Internet.

Collaboration aimed at scoops

The Internet has long since established itself as the dominant medium for German outlets, too. At the same time, publishers and journalists are still grappling with the question of how to finance journalistic content in the face of a widespread belief that online content should be for free. Many outlets have introduced paywall models and merged their print and online editorial staff. Some journalists and outlets are taking a more creative approach and use crowdfunding, produce content across multiple platforms, collaborate more closely with each other and team up to research across media boundaries. A prominent example of this is the investigative research network comprising public broadcasters NDR and WDR and the Süddeutsche Zeitung, which jointly published reports on the VW emissions scandal as well as the Paradise Papers (2017) and the Pandora Papers (2021).

Meanwhile, publishers are trying to compensate for lost revenues through further concentration, meaning that in some regions there is now a complete lack of competition on the print media market. Jobs are being slashed, editorial departments merged, and solutions for multiple utilisation of content pursued. In 2022 Germany had 318 national and regional dailies, 17 weekly papers and 3 Sunday papers, most of which are privately owned.

Germany has both public and commercial radio and television stations. The public broadcasters, which are financed by licensing fees and controlled by an advisory board, have a mandate to provide a basic information and entertainment service. The combined annual budget of Germany’s public broadcasting institutions was around 8.4 billion euros, according to recent figures. Newspaper publishers have been complaining about the public broadcasters’ activities on the Internet and on mobile devices for years. A long-standing dispute over how many and which fee-financed texts they are allowed to put online was settled in 2018. In order to set their content and services apart from those of the newspaper publishers, the public service broadcasters have committed to focusing mainly on video and audio content on the Internet, too. A recent scandal involving a former director of public broadcaster RBB and ARD chairwoman has reignited the debate about the need for a fundamental reform of the public broadcasting system.

World Press Freedom Index (Reporters Without Borders): Rank 21 (2023)

Last updated: April 2023

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