By Gabriele Hooffacker
»You can’t say anything anymore these days« – a sentiment sometimes stated by journalists as well. Hence, what is the current state of press freedom? »Anyone who criticizes Israel is quickly labeled an anti-Semite in Germany,« one interviewee tells Mandy Tröger. Her article »On the impact of anti-Semitism resolutions on journalism in Germany« deals with the practical implications of the debate on criticizing Israel and anti-Semitism, which are reflected in various resolutions. Spoiler alert: All the experts interviewed for the article consider the infringements of fundamental rights based on the resolutions to be highly problematic.
The focus of the current issue, »The Freedom of the Press and Right-wing Extremism,« is introduced by a find from the New York Weekly Journal of 1733. Its publisher, John Peter Zenger, prefaced the text with a Latin quotation: Mira temporum felicitas ubi sentiri quae velis, et quae sentias dicere licet, roughly translated as »What wonderful fortune these times are, when one can think what one will and say what one thinks.« Strictly speaking, Tacitus wrote in Histories, Book I, 1: Rara temporum felicitate, ubi sentire quae velis, et quae sentias dicere licet, which amounts to roughly the same thing, with the difference, however, that Tacitus speaks of a »rare happiness.«
Zenger was fortunate in 18th-century English colonies in North America – the publisher and journalist was thrown into prison and charged because his weekly newspaper had sharply criticized the governor of New York, William Cosby. Miraculously, Zenger was acquitted – a victory for the freedom of the press, which at that time had not been constitutionally guaranteed. Gunter Reus unearthed this gem, a fitting introduction to the focus of this issue.
Our focus begins with an interview study by Olivia Mangold: »Attacks from the right. Effects of right-wing extremist threats on journalistic practice in Germany.« Four journalists from West Germany who regularly report on right-wing extremism talk about violence, threats, and intimidation attempts in the guided interviews.
»It really affects how you move, how you travel by train, how often you look over your shoulder on your way home,« Michael Krell, Klemens Köhler, and Tom Böhme quote one of the journalists interviewed in their article. Using qualitative interviews, they examine »how covering the far right in East Germany affects media professionals, both in their professional practices and the challenges and consequences that entails.« Their situation is so severe that some of the journalists only leave their homes for the most essential purposes. They are bombarded with death threats online, which is why they have largely gone silent on the internet. This is a far cry from the happiness Tacitus evoked almost two thousand years ago: being able to say and write what they have discovered. Rather, it seems that it is often precisely those who claim that they are no longer allowed to speak out who are most eager to silence voices of enlightenment.
So far, this issue has focused on the question of how right-wing extremism affects journalism. Vice versa, it is necessary to address the equally important question of how journalism deals or should deal with right-wing extremism. How can and should journalists report on the right-wing party AfD? Horst Pöttker addresses this issue in his article »Freedom of the press and right-wing extremism – a dilemma? Theses on how journalism should deal with the AfD.« He advises »avoiding the counterproductive effects of journalistic outrage about the AfD« and calls for a »strategy of dealing with right-wing extremism in a manner that is as fearless as it is factual and sober.« Horst Pöttker is aware of the difficulties involved in the AfD’s strategy of legalism, for example. His demand is based on the conviction that there is still much that can be said, because he wants journalism to »explain the concrete consequences for society and each of its members of placing power in the hands of a party like the AfD through individual voting decisions.«
Iulia Bârză and Veronica Câmpian take a look at Romania in their article »Media freedom in the shadow of right-wing extremism. Challenges for journalists from Romania.« They conclude that »while the extreme right has created a climate of intimidation, this has also fostered collective resistance within the journalistic community.« However, they point out possible solutions: It is necessary to »create solid mechanisms to protect against manipulation and disinformation.«
The media in the US currently faces the problem »that government information, especially from supposedly impartial sources, is being distorted to serve the government’s goals,« according to Jelani Cobb, Dean of the Columbia Journalism School, in an interview with Stine Eckert. This makes clear how much the »wonderful fortune of these times, when you can think what you want and say what you think« can be considered a positive utopia in the US at the moment.
»You are a gangster and a prostitute, a banker and a boxer, a heretic and a mystic all rolled into one,« is how Georg Stefan Troller, who passed away in September at the age of 103, described his interview technique. Siegfried Weischenberg dedicated a portrait to the great journalist, who explored the freedom of the press and suffered repeatedly from its restrictions. We are publishing an abridged version of this portrait in advance.
The joy of being able to write what you think can be found in the books journalists have written. Boris Romahn (Salzburg) and Martina Thiele (Tübingen) have seized the opportunity to breathe new life into the »Book Journalism« section. »Book Journalism«, founded by Wolfgang R. Langenbucher and Hannes Haas, and continued by Fritz Hausjell, thus remains an Austrian-German co-production. What is new is that the »Top Ten« are no longer ranked, but simply ten new books by journalists are being presented that the Boris Rohman and Martina Thiele consider worth a read. She comments: »These do not have to be specialist books that deal with journalistic topics; fiction, novels, poetry collections, short stories, treatises – anything that journalists put between two covers is of interest to ›book journalism‹ and will now be presented to readers of Journalism Research in every issue.«
This first issue already showcases the range of authors, topics, and forms: from »Hitler’s queer artist Stephanie Hollenstein« to »The shadow realm of Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski« to three current biographies of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, from critical analyses of how to deal with the AfD or the influence of Islamic organisations to questions of individual and collective identity.
And the tried-and-tested reviews section features reviews of Henrik Müller: Challenging economic journalism, Lutz Hachmeister: Hitler’s interviews. The dictator and the journalists, and Ingrid Brodnig, Florian Klenk, Gabi Waldner, Armin Wolf (eds.): Practical journalism. A textbook for career starters and anyone who wants to know how the media works. The latter in particular uses many examples from Austria to show that the »rare good fortune of these times, in which one can think what one wants and say what one thinks,« does not come about by itself, but must be renegotiated and reconquered again and again.
Munich, November 2025
Gabriele Hooffacker