Unwilling to engage? You seem to watch the wrong shows... I've seen tons of interviews with people advocating immigration control. Some where even quite friendly.
There is a problem you don't seem to have noticed: The AFD Party does not only advocate tighter immigration control, but it also wants to hold offices. So if the news media document the utter failure of this party to even conduct their basic business without minor and major scandals, it saves us from voting some complete idiot into office.
And where they got into office they continue to disappoint. Some just quit the party, others don't do any constructive work, some collaborate with the extreme right (and then they say they didn't).
The media has an obligation to inform the public about the quality of politicians. That the AFD mostly fields ridiculously incompetent or inadequate candidates is not the media's fault.
>Unwilling to engage? You seem to watch the wrong shows... I've seen tons of interviews with people advocating immigration control. Some where even quite friendly.
As I said, the mainstream only allows a very narrow discourse on immigration, which Pegida don't seem to fall under.
You characterize this act as a fair way to expose the incompetence of would be politicians. I disagree. It's actually highly unfair, and I think any unbiased person can see that. Why did they pretend to be from RT instead of just asking Pegida their opinions about RT? I don't think Pegida would have given a different answer in either case. The real reason was to make Pegida look stupid. "Look, they can't even tell a real reporter from a fake one". Whatever you think about Pegida's views on freedom of the press and RT, they should be judged on their merits and not in the context of a stupid stunt.
As to what Pegida said, as I said before, I disagree but I see where they are coming from. They have a justified view that the Western press is not free when it comes to some issues. That they lack knowledge of RT and are uncritical of RT, is a minor issue.
Actually, journalists from serious media tried that. With very little success. Most participants refuse interviews, and there is a video where masked participants forcibly carry away an interviewee. In other videos journalists are hit, their cameras damaged, and all the time they are shouting hate at the journalists.
The "narrow" discussion of immigration is more due to the limited options which have any reasonable chance of getting public support. As we've seen, the majority disagrees with Pegida. Only a fringe portion of the German public wants to break the constitution to tighten immigration. And those who try to fall somewhere in between current policy and breaking the constitution, often don't understand the topic worth a damn. If a journalist has even a modest understanding of the topic he will have the greatest difficulty of entertaining opinions and solutions which are based on factual errors.
Do you have any links regarding what you said about the impossibility of interviewing Pegida. From googling, I found the following interviews with Pegida members by RTL, at what appeared to be a peaceful protest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl0KPaLPL7g and by Phoenix at another apparently peaceful demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp2HKPQpfdg
>And those who try to fall somewhere in between current policy and breaking the constitution, often don't understand the topic worth a damn. If a journalist has even a modest understanding of the topic he will have the greatest difficulty of entertaining opinions and solutions which are based on factual errors.
Well that's a very subjective matter. I see a lot of junk "knowledge" touted by pro immigration groups on this topic. For example, in most European countries immigrants commit more crimes. But there is a lot of obfuscation on this topic, and it's easy to get a smart sounding person to obfuscate the fact that the conditional probability of someone committing a crime given that they are an immigrant (see [0] for an example).
There is a problem you don't seem to have noticed: The AFD Party does not only advocate tighter immigration control, but it also wants to hold offices. So if the news media document the utter failure of this party to even conduct their basic business without minor and major scandals, it saves us from voting some complete idiot into office.
And where they got into office they continue to disappoint. Some just quit the party, others don't do any constructive work, some collaborate with the extreme right (and then they say they didn't).
The media has an obligation to inform the public about the quality of politicians. That the AFD mostly fields ridiculously incompetent or inadequate candidates is not the media's fault.