In early 2015, the anti-immigration movement Pegida — the "Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the Occident" — attracted tens of thousands of supporters in the eastern city of Dresden and elsewhere to its weekly protest marches. Most of those who joined were hardly neo-Nazis, but rather eastern Germans who felt their voices were not heard by mainstream politicians.

But their self-declared leaders called the media the "enemy," or "lügenpresse," a derogatory word meaning "lying press" once used by the Nazi Party. For months, tensions simmered as the chorus of voices shouting "lying press" grew louder. Then those tensions suddenly escalated.

At a rally in January 2015 in Leipzig, one of Pegida's leaders condoned the use of violence against journalists and politicians. At the same rally, a female reporter was struck in the face and injured. It's not clear whether the timing was a coincidence or related, but many more violent assaults followed. Since then, Germany's leading broadcasters have refused to send their reporters to cover anti-immigration protests without private security personnel. "At some point, it was impossible for us to walk around at the protests with a notebook. People would immediately target us," said Tobias Wolf, an investigative reporter with local newspaper Sächsische Zeitung.

Despite increased security measures, reporters were seriously assaulted at least 20 times in the German state of Saxony — home to Dresden and Leipzig — in 2015. Did hateful rhetoric incite that violence? And could something similar happen on a larger scale in other countries where verbal attacks against journalists are on the rise?

Parallels with Trump's attacks on the media

AD

AD

Human rights observers, academics and affected journalists are alarmed that the answer could be "yes." That's particularly true in the United States, where President Trump's attacks on the media reflect a pattern observed in eastern Germany shortly before the assaults began and that persists today.

On Friday, Trump again denounced the media, saying many stories about his administration are “fake news.”

“They make up sources. They are very dishonest people,” Trump said, singling out a recent Washington Post article which helped lead to national security adviser Michael Flynn's resignation.

In the run-up to the U.S. election, Trump banned several media outlets from his rallies, including The Washington Post, and prefers using campaign rallies or Twitter to reach his supporters directly. In Dresden, leaders of Pegida and many supporters categorically refused to speak to certain media outlets but happily spread their message to papers or TV channels they perceived to be less biased or through social media. The right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party recently banned a reporter from a public event in Dresden.

AD

AD

Martin Hoffmann, a senior researcher at the European Center for Press and Media Freedom, also thinks there are parallels in the way Trump singles out media outlets and the attacks unleashed by Pegida. "Trump recently sent around an email to his supporters asking them to rate individual media outlets, and he has [attacked individual] reporters in the past. That reminded me of Pegida, which once handed out awards to the 'least honest' journalists," he said.

In Germany, the far right's attacks against journalists also ended up becoming almost normal. AfD, which has sometimes polled as the third-most popular party in Germany, adopted some of their slogans. Its leader, Frauke Petry, frequently refers to the "Pinocchio press," which some people see as a sanitized version of the historically loaded "lügenpresse" term.

"The backing of the AfD, as a large political party which stood behind verbal attacks on the media, legitimized violence against journalists," said a local reporter who did not want to be named due to fears over her safety.

To a large extent, the attacks on the media in eastern Germany and the United States also have similar origins. In the states, many voters accused journalists based in Washington or New York of ignoring life outside of those urban areas. In Germany, a similar dynamic has developed since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Critics say that many reports about what used to be East Germany in national media outlets still sound like dispatches from foreign countries, and locals see such coverage as arrogant and misleading.

AD

AD

Attempts to restore trust remain difficult

Local newspapers say they have attempted to fix that problem. The Sächsische Zeitung newspaper has tried to become more transparent since 2015 by explaining how editorial decisions are made. It also prints more letters sent in by readers, "because it is true that many journalists have the same political and educational background," acknowledged Heinrich Löbbers, one of the paper's executive editors.

The number of attacks has declined since 2015, as has the number of Pegida supporters marching on the streets. But although, Löbbers said, tensions between journalists and protesters have calmed down since 2015, others warn that longer-term effects might emerge now.

AD

Hoffmann thinks the distrust has become deeply entrenched among certain parts of the population. "We've recently seen the emergence of a new severity of attacks, targeting journalists working far away from protest marches who are simply doing their everyday jobs," he said. "Covering a protest is voluntary. But if attacks became more widespread, that would be a really serious problem."