ABSTRACT
This critique of early coverage of the refugee crisis in Germany bluntly poses a question that haunted all media conversations in the mid-2010s: How can a profession in crisis cover a major crisis? News organizations across Europe (and beyond) struggled with depleted financial and human resources and disappearing foreign coverage, which made it exponentially harder to tackle the swirl of hoaxes as well as to cut through political spin of all stripes, including the unquestioning “welcome culture” that initially dominated news stories.
