“Three-quarters of a year ago we issued a directive to report everything that is even remotely illegal,” Stefan Kaltenbrunner, editor-in-chief of Austrian daily Kurier, said in an interview with IPI when asked how his newspaper counters verbal abuse and threats against its journalists. He confirmed that Kurier had already reported 40 to 50 comments to the public prosecutor by the time IPI interviewed him on Dec. 20.

Kurier, one of Austria’s top newspapers, has been developing solid mechanisms to tackle online trolling. Nonetheless, as Kaltenbrunner noted, these measures are costly in terms of both human and economic resources. To meet that challenge, the Kurier.at editor argued for developing a standard protocol that could be implemented across the media industry as a step towards a more efficient framework to counter online violence against journalists.

This interview represents a new chapter in the series “Voices Against Online Harassment”, which IPI launched in December to raise awareness about impact of online hate and violence against reporters.