Patrick Peltz

My work focuses on press freedom, democratic erosion, and disinformation in Europe, with a particular interest in how violations of media freedom reflect and reinforce broader authoritarian dynamics. This increasingly includes how technological developments shape both threats to journalism and responses to them.At the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF), I lead PROVAIDE (Provenance and Dissemination Pathways of Disinformation with AI-Assisted Evidence Checking), a collaborative three-year research and development project funded by Germany's Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMFTR). I also lead the annual study "Feindbild Journalist:in", which analyzes dynamics of violence against journalists, protection and support mechanisms, and other forms of media freedom violations in Germany. Within this broader work, I pay particular attention to local journalism, especially in environments influenced by the far right.

Definition of journalists' safety

Journalist safety is a multidimensional occupational concept encompassing personal dimensions – physical and psychological integrity – as well as infrastructural dimensions, namely digital and financial security. It operates on both objective, material and subjective, perceptual levels, and is moderated by risk factors across three analytical levels: individual (micro), organizational (meso), and systemic (macro), rooted in power dynamics that define the boundaries of journalistic work – boundaries whose transgression generates threats and work-related stress, with compromised safety potentially driving journalists out of the profession and thereby weakening journalism as a democratic institution.