Freedom of the Press 2008 - Germany

Status: Free
Legal Environment: 6 (of 30)
Political Environment: 6 (of 40)
Economic Environment: 4 (of 30)
Total Score: 16 (of 100)
(Lower scores = freer)

Germany's media remained free and vibrant in 2007, despite challenges to source confidentiality. The constitution guarantees freedom of expression and of the press, although there are exceptions for hate speech, Holocaust denial, and Nazi propaganda. Early in 2007, two men were sentenced to prison for denying the Holocaust and inciting racial hatred. Ernst Zündel was sentenced to five years for running a website from Canada which questioned the Holocaust and presented anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi views. In an unrelated case, Germar Rudolf was sentenced to 30 months in jail for publishing a book which questioned the used of Zyklon B in the concentration camps. Freedom of information legislation finally went into force in January 2006, containing numerous exemptions and requiring the payment of high fees in advance of every request. In February 2007, the German constitutional court ruled that the raid on the Cicero office in 2005 had been illegal. Several months after Cicero had published extracts from a confidential report about Al-Qaeda in 2005, police raided the political magazine office and the home of the journalist who had written the article. In November 2007 the German government approved a bill requiring telecommunications firms to store data for up to six months, including emails, text messages, and cell phone conversations. The new law, which will go into effect January 1, 2008, permits the bugging of lawyers, journalists and doctors under certain circumstances while providing a level of protection to religious clerics, members of parliament, and state prosecutors. Journalists are concerned that the law threatens their source confidentiality, and in the process, their freedom.

In August 2007, the German government launched a criminal investigation against 17 journalists from a number of influential publications, including Der Spiegel, Die Welt, and Süddeutsche Zeitung. The journalists were accused of breaking article 353B of the criminal code, "divulging" state secrets. The journalists involved were accused of publishing excerpts from secret government documents related to CIA rendition flights and the possible misconduct of German military personnel during the 2003 Iraq invasion. The cases had all been dropped, however, by the end of the year.

Although it is not a legal requirement that journalists obtain approval from the person whom they have interviewed prior to publication, it has become custom. This relationship was brought into question when lifestyle magazine U_mag published an interview with actress Hannah Herzsprung. Journalist Volker Sievert declared himself stunned when the transcript of his interview with Herzsprung came back heavily censored, and so the transcript was published as it was, complete with blacked-out statements, which covered around half the document.

The private media are diverse and independent. Each of the 16 regional governments is in charge of its own public radio and television broadcasters, and there are many private stations as well. The print press is dominated by numerous regional papers. Only a handful of national papers are published. A small number of centralized editorial offices control most content, and only a few commercial groups, which are some of the largest in the world, dominate the media market. The internet is open and largely unrestricted and was accessed regularly by over 64 percent of the population in 2007. However, German law bans internet access to the aforementioned prohibited material. Many search engines in Germany have subscribed to the Voluntary Self-Control for Multimedia Service Providers association, filtering websites based on a list created by Germany's Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons.