German media were too uncritical in their coverage of the 2015 refugee crisis, giving Angela Merkel?s open-door policy a free pass and failing to represent the legitimate concerns of ordinary people alarmed by the influx, a new study has found.
The report, commissioned by the Otto Brenner Stiftung in Frankfurt, said the coverage was so one-sided that it ended up deepening the ideological rift in Germany between liberals on the one hand and nationalists and conservatives on the other.
newspapers made no attempt to differentiate between rightwing radicals and ordinary people who were left feeling politically insecure or marginalised by the refugee influx. Instead of critical reporting, journalists had merely ?adopted the viewpoint and also the slogans of the political elite?.
https://www.ft.com/content/23e02b76-...f-99f383b09ff9
The study, led by Michael Haller, a former senior editor at weekly newspaper Die Zeit, is the most comprehensive analysis of how the German media dealt with the migrant crisis.
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