Free media security

AfD bans German public TV from European right-wing parties’ conference for ‘biased’ reporting

All German public broadcasters have been barred from a conference of the European populist anti-immigration parties by the event hosts from the German right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which said the media did not meet journalistic standards.

Marcus Pretzell, an AfD MEP and the co-organizer of the conference scheduled for January 21, slammed German publicly funded media for their biased reporting as he explained the organizers’ decision to the German dpa news agency.

“The public broadcasters have such biased reporting that they could easily produce their scripted stories without direct access [to the conference], alongside with Compact and Handelsblatt,” he said, mentioning the German Handelsblatt business daily and a right-wing populist Compact journal among the media outlets banned from the event.