What a brutal attack on a politician tells us about the state of German journalism

Photo by Christian Lue on Unsplash

Dear Reader,

On Friday, a candidate for the Social Democrats for the upcoming EU elections was hospitalised after being beaten up while putting up campaign posters in Dresden.

SPD politician Matthias Ecke was attacked by four assailants late in the evening. They punched him with such ferocity that he had to be operated on.

The same attackers are believed to have assaulted a member of the Green party who was putting up campaign posters in the same neighbourhood earlier that evening.

According to a witness, all the attackers were wearing jackets and baseball caps pulled down to disguise their faces.

Police have since identified four teenagers aged between 17 and 18 as the suspects and have searched their homes.

Three days later, on Monday afternoon, the police said for the first time that they suspected a far-right motive for the attacks. Nonetheless, the national media decided to report on them as far-right crimes as soon as the news broke.

Der Spiegel, which…