Harassment rarely happens in Austria, online or offline. Over the last decade, few cases of harassment or online shitstorms have occurred, according to our respondents of leading news media. Thus, media companies generally had no special legal division in place to protect their journalists. However, if such insults did happen, media companies employed specialised lawyers to defend the rights of journalists and prevent harm to journalists on those occasions. This applied to both online and offline media, and no specific safeguards or provisions were observed to be in place for online cases. In the case of ORF, the management has the obligation to defend its journalists in the case of any assault (ORF, 2002: para. 4).
The general level of support was considered fair and sufficient by our journalist respondents.
