German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere at a news conference | Tobias Schwarz/AFP/Getty Cologne puts Germany’s ‘lying press’ on defensive Media’s timidity on refugees prompts charges of bias.

BERLIN — Germany’s police and politicians have faced increasing anger in the wake of the New Year’s sex attack spree in Cologne, but much of the public’s ire has been directed at a group more comfortable asking questions than answering them: the news media.

After largely ignoring the story for several days after the attacks, much of the national media appeared reluctant to explore possible links between the attacks and the recent influx of refugees. Some commentators went so far as to suggest it was unlikely asylum seekers were even involved.

“In all likelihood, the people behind this have been here for a long time,” left-leaning daily Süddeutsche Zeitung declared in its lead editorial a week after the attacks.

In other words, just as with the terror attacks in Paris, the culprits in Cologne were most likely homegrown “foreigners.” The real problem, the paper concluded, was likely “failed integration” — German society’s failure to assimilate foreigners.

Just hours after the article appeared, a police report on the assaults surfaced, revealing that many of the suspects were, in fact, refugees.

The German media’s timidity on the Cologne sex assault coverage has presented right-wing agitators with a useful “told you so” moment.

A majority of Germans still trust the media, but more than 40 percent described the reporting on refugees as “one-sided.”

More thoughtful observers see a problem deeper than political bias behind the coverage of Cologne and the broader refugee crisis: a press corps that has shifted from dispassionate observer to political actor. Instead of just reporting and analyzing events, some influential journalists, especially those who work for the public broadcasting networks, consider it their professional duty to serve as a counterweight to the populist rhetoric fueling the country’s right-wing revival, critics say.

“Cologne has helped blow the top off,” said Roland Tichy, a veteran German editor who now runs an eponymous opinion site of conservative commentary.

Rise of the Right

The rapid rise of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party amid the refugee crisis — recent polls predict the party would win about 10 percent of the vote — has unnerved many liberals in and outside the media.

A core aspect of the AfD’s message is that Germany’s public debate is controlled by the politically correct strictures determined by the country’s media elite.

That view has resonated with many citizens who feel their voices aren’t being heard. A decision by local state broadcasters on Tuesday not to include the AfD in upcoming live studio debates ahead of March regional elections will only harden the belief that authorities are trying to suppress the party.

Even before Cologne, many Germans worried the media weren’t telling them everything. In a poll conducted by the respected Allensbach institute in December, 53 percent of respondents said they didn’t believe the media presented an accurate picture of the refugees’ qualifications for employment or other details.

A majority of Germans still trust the media, but more than 40 percent described the reporting on refugees as “one-sided.”

“There’s suspicion that they believe they don’t have to report on such assaults, especially involving migrants and foreigners, for fear of unsettling the public" — Hans-Peter Friedrich.

The most virulent strain of that distrust can be seen on Germany’s streets, during the regular marches by the anti-foreigner Pegida group. Even before the recent wave of refugees began arriving, right-wing marchers revived a slur popular during the Nazi-era – Lügenpresse, or lying press. A number of journalists have even been assaulted at the rallies.

While Germany’s printed press offers a multitude of opinions and views, the public broadcasting sector, once similarly diverse, has veered left in recent years, critics say.

“The public stations have evolved into Social Democratic/Green mainstream broadcasters,” Tichy said. “There’s no denying it.”

Hans-Peter Friedrich, a former interior minister under Angela Merkel, accused the public broadcasters of operating a “cartel of silence.”

“There’s suspicion that they believe they don’t have to report on such assaults, especially involving migrants and foreigners, for fear of unsettling the public,” he said.

Following Friedrich’s critique, a freelance reporter for German public broadcaster WDR told a Dutch radio program that she and her colleagues were obliged to toe the government’s line on the refugee crisis. “We’re a public broadcaster and are therefore expected to approach the problem in a more positive way,” Claudia Zimmermann, the reporter, said.

WDR, the local broadcaster in the Cologne region, vigorously denied Zimmermann’s characterization. The station said it “follows the highest journalistic standards,” including on the refugees.

Zimmermann has since retracted, saying she was nervous during the interview and had spoken “nonsense.”

The cautious approach to news, what one commentator recently called “nanny journalism,” is a vestige of the effort to reprogram Germans after World War II from Nazi sympathizers into peace-loving democrats.

Public radio and later television served as important instruments for civic education during the post-war era, a mission the broadcasters never abandoned.

The public stations’ formal, sober news presentation might recall a bygone television era, but most Germans swear by the no-frills approach to news.

Germany’s public broadcasting, a juggernaut that includes two national television channels, known as ARD and ZDF, regional affiliates as well as national and local radio, dominates political coverage in the country.

As in the U.K. and many other European countries, the operations are financed through a compulsory fee levied on households.

A handful of commercial broadcasters also have news divisions, but most Germans continue to rely on public outlets for their information. The private stations, including N24, a news channel that belongs to Axel Springer (co-owner of POLITICO Europe), lack the resources of the larger public operations.

The public broadcasters vigorously reject claims of manipulation, insisting they are driven by nothing more than a duty to inform the public.

“It annoys me because for the ARD there’s not a single instance where this accusation can be proved,” Thomas Baumann, the station’s editor-in-chief, said in response to suggestions the broadcaster withheld information on Cologne and other crimes involving refugees.

“Those on the verge of collapse as they groan under the weight of the chancellor’s mindless policies are shown on public television, but always in the role of the malcontent” — Michael Hanfeld.

ARD Chairwoman Karola Wille said last week that while she took the public’s concerns seriously, the broadcaster’s lofty mission was more essential than ever.

“The public broadcasting contract remains and remains intact: to impart values, promote opinion- and decision-making in society and to ensure the functioning of democracy,” she said.

Soft coverage

For the broadcasters’ detractors, Cologne represents the latest example of months of tendentious coverage. One common complaint is news reports on the refugees often picture families and women, even though single young men make up the vast majority of those arriving.

Another is that the broadcasters downplay or conceal events that might rouse the public’s emotions. The alleged gang rape of two teenage girls in southwest Germany on New Year’s Eve by four Syrian refugees was not reported by any of the main news programs, for example, despite the parallels to the attacks in Cologne and other cities.

SWR, the regional public channel, reported on the rapes but was quick to add: “The nationality of the suspects played an ‘insignificant role’ in the crime, investigators and prosecutors said.”

Such reporting has fueled criticism that the broadcasters soft pedal any hint of criminal behavior among refugees. It also earned them a new moniker: “Willkommens Broadcaster” — a play on the so-called “Willkommenskultur,” or culture of welcome that swept Germany in the early days of the refugee crisis.

The quips are only partly in jest. Opponents of Angela Merkel’s refugee policies say the public media demonize anyone who dares speak out against them.

“Those on the verge of collapse as they groan under the weight of the chancellor’s mindless policies are shown on public television, but always in the role of the malcontent,” wrote commentator Michael Hanfeld in a widely-read column for the Frankfurter Allgemeine daily in November.

'An uprising of the decent'

In early August, a few weeks before Merkel announced her open-door policy, ARD reporter Anja Reschke delivered feisty prime-time commentary, decrying the xenophobia that had taken root in some parts of Germany. The time had come, she said, for an “uprising of the decent.”

The commentary created a stir. While some viewers saw it as an attempt to muzzle opponents of a liberal asylum policy, others applauded what they regarded as a courageous stance.

The two-minute appearance won Reschke Germany’s “Journalist of the Year” honor, a decision made by a jury of 80 of her peers. “No other journalistic contribution this year had so much impact or created as much furor as this commentary,” the jury concluded.

To those critical of the German press’s refugee coverage, the award offered further confirmation of a hidden agenda.

The skepticism hasn’t gone unnoticed.

After ZDF, Germany’s second national broadcaster, failed to report on the Cologne attacks in its primetime news program even after other national media had picked up on the story, the station’s editor apologized.

“The news was clear enough,” the editor said in statement posted on the station’s Facebook page. “It was a failure.”

On Monday, Claus Kleber, Germany’s most prominent anchorman, apologized for recent remarks he made on ZDF equating skeptics of Merkel’s refugee policy to nationalists and xenophobes, saying he had been “negligent."

Meanwhile, Germany’s newspapers and magazines, which have also come under fire, have started to show a tougher side to readers. Last week, Focus, a news weekly, put a naked white woman with black handprints all over her body on its cover. The headline: “Are we tolerant or blind?” The depiction sparked an outcry and charges of racism.

Just a few days after the column suggesting refugees were unlikely to have been involved in the Cologne assaults, the Süddeutsche Zeitung ran a controversial front page illustration of its own: a black hand reaching into a white female figure’s crotch.

The newspaper’s editor has since apologized.

This article has been updated with further details about German broadcasters.