Deutsche Welle Amharic: Open Letter to Ethiomedia.com

Having read, with a growing sense of disbelief and disillusionment, a number of articles on Ethiomedia alleging self-censorship at DW Amharic, kindly allow me to set the record straight.

One expects a certain degree of harassment from an authoritarian government that has been repeatedly criticized for its human rights record and doctored elections. I did not expect the same, and worse, harassment from people who claim to champion democracy and freedom of speech. While the present political set-up is faulty in many ways, I shudder at the thought that some of these self-proclaimed democrats may well be enlisted in a future one.

While I appreciate some of the more analytical and sober stories on Ethiomedia and similar diaspora news sites, some articles very clearly do not conform to DW editorial standards. You don’t have to be a citizen of a country still struggling with its Nazi past to find the phrase “the fascist Woyane regime in Addis Ababa” horribly inappropriate, no matter how much one may disagree with the present government.

It is our view that some of the content splashed across certain news sites constitutes hate speech, and DW will not allow opinion pieces by its journalists to be posted alongside hate speech. Again, the issue is really quite simple, and has nothing to do with self-censorship. —Ludger Schadomsky, Editor-in-chief, DW Amharic.

Read the rest of the letter, here.