Study planned on threatened local journalists – media

The Federal Association of German Newspaper Publishers (BDVZ) and the European Center for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) want to collect and make available reliable data on the safety of local journalists. To this end, the two organizations have now initiated a new platform “Image as an enemy of journalists – monitoring local journalism”. The police and authorities should also be made aware of the security situation of local journalists with the study.

Affected journalists can describe their case using an online questionnaire and thus participate in the monitoring. According to the BDZV and ECPMF, attacks are to be documented, verified and analyzed in the planned study. These include digital and physical attacks, cyber attacks or attempts at intimidation through doxing (i.e. the publication of personal data), legal action and censorship measures. After a general “enemy image” study that had already been established, local journalists were now additionally specialized because they were increasingly affected: They were in a particularly difficult situation – “the attacks come from the neighborhood, so to speak,” says the managing director of the ECPMF, Lutz Kinkel.

“Hate on the doorstep in this massiveness” is still an unusual and comparatively new phenomenon, explained BDZV general manager Sigrun Albert. The past year was marked by a “negative record of attacks on journalists in Germany”. The number of insults, threats and physical attacks against media workers in Germany has increased significantly; Local journalists are also increasingly affected by this development.

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