ABSTRACT
This chapter reveals how coverage in both print and television, and the public's mood, shifted as the news changed from refugee arrival to refugees staying in Austria, a country that admitted record numbers of migrants in 2015 but also served a transit role toward the prime destination, Germany. In the space of a few months, public perception and media coverage of the refugee crisis in Austria went in tandem from empathy to hostility. The authors – working for one of the most popular programs in Vienna for Österreichischer Rundfunk (Austria's public broadcaster) and one of the country's leading weekly news magazines, profil – reveal their efforts to anticipate developments and the editorial decisions they made, assess their impact on both public opinion and their own credibility, and show how coverage was defined by four pivotal, game-changing events. These events, beginning with the gruesome discovery of decomposed bodies abandoned by smugglers inside a truck, had the power to serve as focal points for the overall dynamics, adding critical mass to changing politics and policies, and to spur journalists to probe deeper into both refugee issues and the status of the wider society.
