Tag: threats

Edition 3-4/2025, Focus

Attacks by the far right The impact of right-wing extremist threats on journalistic practice in Germany. An interview study

By Olivia Mangold | Journalists reporting on right-wing extremism are increasingly confronted with hostility, intimidation, and assault. This development endangers freedom of press and challenges fundamental democratic values. The qualitative study examines the evolution of right-wing extremist threats over the past five years and their implications for journalistic practice. It focuses on four journalists who reported in semi-structured interviews about repeated threats ranging from verbal abuse and legal intimidation to physical assaults. In response, the journalists developed various protective strategies, such as publishing anonymously, adapting their research methods, and exercising greater caution in topic selection. Despite their professional commitment to unbiased reporting, tendencies toward self-censorship and growing mistrust of state institutions became apparent. Thus, threats by right-wing extremists not only affect individuals but also structurally restrict press freedom. In order to counteract this, targeted protection measures, institutional support, and broader societal awareness are needed.

Edition 3-4/2025, Focus

»It determined my everyday life, it makes you just afraid.« A socio-spatial investigation into the effects of freelance and local journalism on the far right in East Germany

By Michael Krell, Klemens Köhler and Tom Böhme | The emergence of the far right in Germany has resulted in an elevated risk for the safety of journalists covering this beat. Attacks on the press have escalated considerably since the rise of large-scale anti-asylum protests, such as PEGIDA, particularly in East Germany (cf. ECPMF 2017). Despite the fact that the media has repeatedly expressed dismay at the severity of violence against the press by far-right groups, there has been little academic discussion of this phenomenon to date. This article addresses this research gap by examining the impact of the far right on journalistic work and the professional and everyday lives of journalists. The main finding of this study is that freelance and local journalists, who are typically positioned at the ›front line‹ of reporting, are exposed to a diverse array of threats from the far right. Utilizing the spatial concept of performative and affective territorialization, hostility towards the press is analyzed in terms of its function as a spatialized form of far-right power seeking. The findings reveal the existential threat posed by hostility towards the press at the individual level to journalists and thus to press freedom as a whole.