Sender AUF1: disinformation without a license?


fact finder

Status: 11/30/2022 8:28 am

The Austrian broadcaster AUF1 spreads false reports and conspiracy myths – and reaches many people in Germany as well. The Austrian media authority has now initiated proceedings against AUF1.

By Carla Reveland and Pascal Siggelkow, editors ARD fact finder

“They are trying to finish us off at all levels,” says Stefan Magnet, editor-in-chief of the Austrian alternative-rights online broadcaster AUF1 in a recent video. The narrative of having to assert oneself against an alleged hate campaign by the “system media” is currently running through the broadcaster’s contributions. “The system media hate AUF1 because we don’t play along with their lies,” it says, for example – linked to the call for a donation to the station.

The reason for the excitement: The Austrian media authority KommAustria recently announced that it had initiated proceedings against AUF1 on suspicion of broadcasting without a license, “since content obviously designed by AUF1 is broadcast as part of the terrestrial RTV program in the Linz area, ” writes KommAustria at the request of the ARD fact finder. However, AUF1 probably never submitted a license application.

Also known to Austrian security authorities

In February 2022, KommAustria had already initiated a content review of AUF1. It was about possible violations of the Audiovisual Media Services Act. Among other things, the law stipulates that reporting and information programs “in all television programs must comply with recognized journalistic principles”. And further: “Before they are disseminated, messages must be checked for truth and origin with the care required under the circumstances.” According to KommAustria, the substantive issue is “still being examined”.

The Austrian security authorities are also already aware of AUF1, as a spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior responded to the request of the ARD fact finder communicates. “Due to the choice of topics by the station, it can be assumed that there is a certain influence on extremist or conspiracy ideological circles. To date, however, no unconstitutional or criminal content has been noticed.”

conspiracy ideology

According to its self-portrayal, AUF1 is an abbreviation for “Alternatives Independent Television, Channel 1”, but repeatedly spreads false information and conspiracy tales via its station. The contributions speak of “vaccination mass killing”, the “deadly transhumanism agenda” or an “asylum tsunami”.

Jan Rathje, senior researcher at the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (CeMAS), says that the topics covered by AUF1 are part of major world conspiracy narratives. Suddenly everything was “part of a big conspiracy with the aim of wiping out the white population in Europe”.

For example, Magnet says in a video that at the beginning of the corona pandemic he could not believe that “everything is centrally managed and controlled”. AUF1 “lifted the veil. We know that the WHO and the World Economic Forum pulled the strings here, that there was a plan to handle this pandemic game”.

“Aegis of Fear Magnification”

The alternative legal broadcaster was founded during the corona pandemic. On May 31, 2021, AUF1 went online for the first time with a contribution. The station is based in Austria, but addresses the entire German-speaking area. The range has increased rapidly since it was founded, so that the station is now one of the largest “alternative media” for the lateral thinker scene and the milieu of conspiracy ideology.

Data from CeMAS show that AUF1 has now taken second place behind the presence of Reitschuster in terms of the reach of “alternative” media. At Telegram alone, the AUF1 channel has almost 230,000 subscribers. “If you look at how many subscribers a channel has, it’s quite unusual, because AUF1 has also overtaken various other ‘alternative’ media,” says Senior Researcher Rathje.

The timing of the founding of AUF1 during the Corona crisis does not surprise Andreas Peham, right-wing extremism and anti-Semitism researcher at the Documentation Archive of Austrian Resistance (DÖW). “The disinformation was then, as now, under the aegis of fear amplification. Because people who are overly afraid are more willing to support extreme views.” Without crises, the content would find little appeal. “If there is no crisis that you amplify, then a crisis is invented.”

Rapid growth of the station

There are different explanations for the rapid success of the station. On the one hand, according to Peham, this is due to the high demand for tabloid journalism, which the “alternative” media would serve with their fear-mongering.

On the other hand, Peham mentions the enormous financial outlay and the associated professional presentation of AUF1. “Unfortunately, I can’t clarify where these funds come from.” Officially, the station is financed by donations. There is also the AUF1 shop, where, among other things, stickers with the inscription “No to compulsory vaccination” are offered. However, experts doubt that this is the only cash flow.

Social media also play a major role in success. The main platform of AUF1 is Telegram – a platform that has just become firmly established in the AUF1 target group during the corona pandemic. “People in particular who go to corona demonstrations and are often open to conspiracy ideological approaches have become accustomed to using Telegram,” says journalist and sociologist Sören Musyal. The timing for establishing the new channel was therefore very good.

Austrian network of “alternative” media

The rapid growth of AUF1 is also due to the fact that “a conglomerate of ‘alternative’ media refer to each other and thus push each other’s content,” says Musyal. Because in addition to AUF1 there are other “alternative” media in Austria – among the most wide-ranging are “Wochenblick”, “Report24” and “Info-DIREKT”.

In Upper Austria, “a real right-wing media network has been built up around the FPÖ, but also beyond it,” said the Austrian politician and operator of the blog “Stop the Right”, Karl Oellinger. Together, these media have a considerable reach in Austria and Germany.

The weekly newspaper Wochenblick, which was founded in 2016 and the Austrian Press Council also warns against its misleading reporting, and the right-wing magazine Info-DIREKT made a start. The “Magazine for Patriots”, as it calls itself, attracts attention with right-wing extremist content, such as the alleged “population exchange”.

The different media “divide the entire right-wing extremist or right-wing spectrum very well,” says Öllinger. Report24 focuses primarily on the scene of corona deniers and corona measures critics. Report24 is supported by the Austrian party “MFG”, which stands for people, freedom, fundamental rights. In turn, AUF1 was for a long time very close to the right-wing populist FPÖ.

far-right past

“Of course, these are not ‘alternative’ media, but disinformation,” says Peham from the DÖW. “Many of these actors, who try to put on a journalistic or serious cloak today, made their first political steps in organized neo-Nazism.”

So does AUF1 boss Magnet. He was a leader in the “Bund Freier Jugend” (BfJ), a right-wing extremist youth organization from Austria – together with Michael Scharfmüller, head of “Info-DIREKT”. Before founding AUF1, Magnet was already working for “Wochenblick”, and he also runs a media agency whose clients included the FPÖ. The editor-in-chief of “Wochenblick”, Elsa Mittmannsgruber, in turn has her own program on AUF1.

Andreas Retschitzegger, program manager for AUF1 in Germany, is a former BfJ squad who also worked in the FPÖ youth organization, in the Freedom Youth Ring.

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