German Quality Press Coverage of the Immigration Issue in the Lead-up to the EU Parliament Election

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Julia R. Islanova

Lecturer at the Chair of Media Linguistics, Faculty of Journalism, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia

e-mail: juliaislanova@gmail.com

Section: Foreign Journalism

The present article is the analysis of German quality press coverage of the immigration policy pursued by the main German political parties in the lead-up to the 2019 EU Parliament election. Materials for the survey were taken from the most established members of the German quality press: the weekly magazine Der Spiegel and the newspapers Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Zeit and Süddeutsche Zeitung. The high turnout in Germany showed how important this election was for ordinary Germans. According to various surveys and the results of the election, people are mostly worried about the immigration issue, climate change and environmental protection. On the one hand, this indicates that the immigration crisis is no longer the only main topic for politicians and the media. On the other hand, the immigration issue remains important and pressing for the society even a few years after the crisis peak. The analysis shows that the coverage of the political parties’ immigration policies was to some extent uneven. Traditional pro-European parties got much more attention than their right-wing adversaries. Moreover, it was revealed that the newspaper Die Zeit violated one of the key principles of quality media, namely impartiality and political neutrality.

Keywords: immigration issue, election, EU Parliament, quality press, Germany, political parties
DOI: 10.30547/vestnik.journ.2.2020.116140

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