Journalists in Germany are under threat by the Network and Enforcement Act that limits free social media expression.

In Germany, Freedom of the press and expression is guaranteed and protected by the constitution. Article 5 of the Basic Law, states that “Every person shall have the right freely to express and disseminate his opinions in speech, writing, and pictures, and to inform himself without hindrance from generally accessible sources. There shall be no censorship.”

This article is protected by the German Press Council, an organisation made up of various publishing and journalism associations. It also monitors free access to information as well as proper conduct among the press. In a virtual interview, Simon Yves, a professional editor at the Antenne Bayern Group, revealed that there is a lot of press freedom enjoyed in Germany, however, social media freedom was restricted in 2017 under the Network and Enforcement Act due to the valid concerns about illegal and abusive online content.

“This Act compels social media companies that have two million or more registered Germany users to remove hate speech and other illegal content with 24hours after receiving a user complaint” Yves said

Mariella Mandurino, the Chief Editor at Radio Pegasus, disclosed that the law was once used to block Titanic, a German satirical monthly magazine that had been published since 1979 with a circulation of over 100,000.

“In 2018, Titanic was blocked for retweeting a politician’s tweet whose content was said to be anti-Muslim. In the same time it retweeted a tweet by Von Storch Beatrix, Deputy Parliamentary leader of an Alternative Party for Germany (AFD) where she accused the police for appeasing what she called “barbaric” gang- raping Muslim hordes on men” she explained.

Sophie Hepach, a journalism student at Katholic University in Eichstatt informed us about the fines charged those found guilty of social media hate speech. “Sometimes when social media companies defy the law, they are fined with 50M Euros and those that are found guilty of hate speech are sentenced to 5years in prison under the Stratesetzbuch (Germany’s Criminal Code),” Hepach said

In German, the Social Media Act has been severally criticized by the UN Human Rights Committee since it’s against the press and freedom Act. Basing on the November 11 Human Rights Committee Report Wenzel Michalski the German Director of Human Rights Watch refers to the Network Enforcement Act as flawed and vague.“This new German law is fundamentally flawed. It is vague, over broad and turns private companies into overzealous censor to avoid over sight or right to appeal” he said

It should be noted that in 2021, the Press Freedom Index compiled by the NGO Reporters Without Borders ranks on countries with press freedom and Germany was ranked 11th of 180 countries.