Fear Of Nationalism And Populism Behind Germany's Censorship Fest
Government agencies are punishing journalists for publishing accurate information about migrant crime rates
Alexander Wendt has been a writer and journalist for Welt, Stern, Tagesspiegel, and Focus since 1989. In 2017, he founded the online magazine Publico.
Vice President J. D. Vance shocked and outraged Europeans in January when he suggested at a security conference in Munich, Germany, that America’s support for Europe in general and NATO in particular depended on Europe’s support for free speech.
Since then, the situation has worsened. Germany’s secret intelligence, security agencies, and judges are cracking down on citizens and independent media alike for what George Orwell called wrongthink.
With great indignation, the newly elected government and courts deny that they are at war against freedom of speech and would love nothing more than to punish anyone who says so. In his reply to Vance, the German Minister of Defense declared the notion of limitations to freedom of speech preposterous while defending the censorship of “fake news” and “misinformation.”
State Media Agencies, or SMAs, play a crucial role in government censorship. Hardly anyone knows about these 14 agencies. Their original purpose was licensing private TV and radio stations, supervising youth protection in private media, and assigning cable network frequencies in Germany’s 16 federal states.
A new law in 2020, the “Media State Treaty,” gave SMAs the power to supervise private creators’ “journalistic diligence obligation.” The new government oversight of journalists affects private radio stations, online magazines, and influential individuals, including politicians.
Notably, the SMAs do not monitor the public broadcasting stations. After a public radio station, Rundfunk Berlin Brandenburg (MABB) smeared a Green Party politician, Stefan Gelbhaar, it took no action. MABB claimed the politician had sexually harassed a woman, even though the editor in charge had never even met with the woman, and thus there was no proof. Nonetheless, the Green party dropped the candidate, ending his political career.
MABB later accused an independent news media company, Nius, of knowingly violating “accepted journalistic standards.” The charges were false. In 2023, Nius published a video report about asylum seekers in Germany receiving extensive dental care. Nius interviewed several migrants who readily provided information and proudly showed their new teeth.
Nonetheless, MABB claimed that Nius had “insufficiently” informed the interviewed about the report’s alleged connection with statements made by CDU leader Friedrich Merz. Merz’s political adversaries had denied that dental care for migrants existed in the first place, and then Nius inconveniently provided irrefutable evidence to the contrary.
Some actions are bizarre. In December 2024, a Nius journalist named Alexander Purrucker commented on former Chancellor Olaf Scholz using the German word “Heimaten” (approximately “homelands”). This plural form doesn’t exist in the spoken German language. “Objection!” Purrucker wrote. “Objection, your Honour! Peruse the Duden [the German dictionary considered the gold standard by most Germans], there is no plural for ‘Heimat’!”
Purrucker’s claim was false, said MABB. The word could be found in the Duden, after all. Again, his alleged violation was of the “journalistic diligence obligation.”
In fact, older dictionaries did not recognize a plural form of “Heimat." Moreover, Purrucker metaphorically used the phrase “Peruse the Duden!” to imply that no native German speaker would dream of using the plural “Heimat” in everyday life.
While media agencies cannot issue fines, they can claim a “service fee” for their chicanery. In the case of Nius, it was €5,000 plus €455,18 expenses.
A law firm, Steinhöfel, has filed lawsuits in both cases. Lawyer Reinhard Höbelt argues that the content in question did not justify MABB’s warnings and that it is abusing its powers.
If the MABB scrutinized public stations or government speeches according to such petty standards, it could issue fines daily.
An SMA of the Lower Saxony region took action against a reporter named Alexander Wallasch, whose online presence has an audience of roughly a million readers per month. For instance, in an essay about the website messerinzidenz.de, a private initiative collecting reports of knife attacks in Germany, Wallasch wrote:
A young student, not affiliated with Bertelsmann or the government, simply does what foundations, ministries, and the government’s forefront organizations have been refusing to do for almost ten years: with the aid of AI he makes the daily knife attacks mainly committed by Syrians and Afghans visible. Very often, the so-called Syrian and Afghan ‘skilled workers’ only put one single tool to use: the knife drawn against their hosts.
In the SMA’s opinion, Wallasch’s comment“[...] displays several potential violations of accepted journalist standards. Firstly, an unproven, generalized statement about Syrian and Afghan migrants is made who, according to your [Wallasch’s] claims, are prone to violence without providing valid sources or evidence [...] Also, the text negatively stereotypes migrants and could thus be considered discriminatory.”
Undoubtedly, Wallasch makes some pointed statements, and the knife-crime map does not specify perpetrators’ demographics because, in many cases, the police are unable to apprehend the knife-wielder.
However, 2023 police statistics show Afghans and Syrians as the main demographic among migrants. And migrants, in turn, accounted for 11.2% of capital crime and 9.1% of brutality offenses while making up only 3% of the population. Among migrant suspects, Syrians and Afghans account for the majority at 19.2% and 11.2%, respectively.
In other words, Wallasch was not factually wrong, and the SMA does not even attempt to disprove his claims. The bottom line is that it was not a “disinformation” case, defined as willfully false claims intended to gain political influence.
Nevertheless, the Lower Saxony SMA ordered Wallasch to fact-check the 3,000 articles in his platform’s archive. “Impossible for such a small medium”, Wallasch states, “especially when they don’t even specify what to check for."
Why is the government doing this? What’s motivating it to ramp up the censorship?
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