About Unzensuriert

Unzensuriert

Unzensuriert, at unzensuriert.at, is a right-wing alternative news portal based in Vienna, Austria, founded in 2009 in the circle of Martin Graf, then Third President of the National Council and a leading figure in the Freedom Party of Austria, the FPÖ. Its name means uncensored, and that single word states its founding promise: to publish what, in its presentation, mainstream media leave out. Austria-Forum, drawing on the reporting of the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance, the DÖW, on right-wing extremism, calls it the starting point of Austria's right-wing alternative online media. The site itself claims to be independent; its publisher is 1848 Medienvielfalt Verlags GmbH, whose managing director Walter Asperl works as an adviser in the FPÖ parliamentary club.

Those two sentences — the claim of independence and the documented closeness to the FPÖ — define the long-running debate about Unzensuriert. The European Journalism Observatory and other researchers describe it as a site founded as the blog of a senior party figure and co-run by FPÖ parliamentary staff, publishing Austrian and international political news with a focus on migration and Islam, mixing news lifted from other sources with commentary. The Reuters Institute's country reporting has called it a right-wing, anti-Europe, anti-immigration website founded by a former Freedom Party politician, whose articles are shared on Facebook by party members. This profile records both the self-description and the documented connections, because a directory profile that omitted either would mislead.

Founding in 2009 around Martin Graf

Unzensuriert was founded in 2009 in the circle of Martin Graf, at that time Third President of the National Council, the second chamber leadership office of Austria's parliament, and a senior FPÖ politician. Earlier research accounts describe the site as founded as the blog of a senior party figure, and Reuters Institute reporting describes its founder as a former Freedom Party politician. The precise founding formulation varies by source — in the circle of Graf, as his blog, by a former FPÖ politician — but the core is consistent: Unzensuriert began in 2009 as a project from inside the FPÖ's parliamentary milieu, not as a commercial media start-up and not as an outsider blog that later drifted towards a party.

The year matters. In 2009, Facebook was becoming the main distribution system for political content in Austria, legacy media still dominated formal news, and no established alternative-news sector existed on the Austrian right. Unzensuriert filled that space early. Austria-Forum's judgement, drawing on DÖW reporting, that it was the starting point of Austria's right-wing alternative online media captures that pioneer role: later titles such as Wochenblick, founded in 2016, and Report24, which followed, operated in a landscape Unzensuriert had already opened. Its longevity — publishing continuously since 2009 — is itself a significant fact in a sector where many alternative titles are short-lived.

Publisher: 1848 Medienvielfalt Verlags GmbH

The publisher of Unzensuriert is 1848 Medienvielfalt Verlags GmbH. The company's managing director, Walter Asperl, works as an adviser in the FPÖ parliamentary club, a connection documented in the directory seed and consistent with research descriptions of the site as co-run by FPÖ parliamentary staff. The company name, invoking 1848 — the year of liberal revolutions in Europe, including demands for press freedom — aligns with the site's self-presentation as a defender of uncensored speech against a supposedly restrictive mainstream.

The site itself claims to be independent. That claim, and the documented personnel connection between its publisher's management and the FPÖ parliamentary club, coexist in the record and are both reported here. This pattern — formal independence claimed, close party milieu documented — recurs across Austria's alternative media and is one reason researchers treat self-descriptions cautiously while still recording them. For the directory reader, the practical point is that Unzensuriert is catalogued as a right-wing alternative portal with documented FPÖ-milieu origins and management connections, which presents itself as independent.

Editorial focus: migration, Islam and politics

Unzensuriert focuses on migration, Islam and politics, mixing news items with commentary. The European Journalism Observatory's account, widely cited, describes it as an ideological outfit publishing Austrian and international political news, purporting to give readers the truth that mainstream media is silent about, with stories on unrest in other European countries, refugee and migration questions, and criticism of governing parties and the European Union. Reuters Institute reporting similarly characterises its line as anti-Europe and anti-immigration. Its articles are frequently shared on social media by FPÖ members, extending its reach into the party's supporter networks in both Austria and Germany.

That cross-border readership is documented and distinctive. Research on Austria's far-right online ecosystem noted that such sites are read not only in Austria, with Unzensuriert receiving more than half of its traffic from Germany at the time of that survey, and that Austrian far-right sites were widely read among followers of Germany's Pegida movement. No current audited traffic figure was established for this profile, and the German-traffic observation is reported here as a finding of its period, from the mid-2010s refugee-crisis years, not as a present-day measurement. What it establishes historically is that a Vienna-based Austrian portal became part of a German-language alternative-media space that ignores the Austria-Germany border.

Role in the FPÖ's online ecosystem

Researchers on Austria's far right describe Unzensuriert as the most prominent of the websites publishing controversial content that the FPÖ frequently shares on social media. In the period when Heinz-Christian Strache led the FPÖ and used Facebook to communicate directly with voters, bypassing journalistic filtering, sites like Unzensuriert supplied a stream of shareable material aligned with the party's campaigns on migration and Islam. The site's former editor-in-chief Alexander Höferl later became head of communications at the Interior Ministry when the FPÖ held that ministry in government, an appointment noted critically by Austrian media reporting in 2018.

That personnel path — from alternative portal to ministry communications — illustrates the site's place in a political-media career ecosystem. Unzensuriert was not merely read by the FPÖ milieu; it trained and supplied people within it. At the same time, the party could benefit from the site's harder-edged content while the site claimed independence and the party maintained formal distance. Understanding that arrangement, documented by the European Journalism Observatory, StopFake and Austrian media-freedom reporting alike, is essential to understanding how the portal has exercised influence beyond its own pages.

Controversies, courts and media criticism

Unzensuriert has been a repeated subject of criticism and legal attention. Reuters Institute country reporting noted that comment forums on the website included cases of hate speech that were subject to a court injunction, along with false claims about presidential candidate Alexander Van der Bellen during the polarised 2016 presidential election, when rumours that began online — including claims about Van der Bellen's health and a false claim that he was a spy — became a national fake-news debate. Austrian media analysis in Profil described the site as publishing manipulative and conspiracy-driven news pieces mainly targeting migrants, Muslims and political opponents of the FPÖ.

The International Press Institute's reporting on Austria's fake-news debate placed Unzensuriert among the far-right platforms whose popularity rose during the refugee crisis of 2015 and 2016, when, in the account of Der Standard editor Fabian Schmid, mainstream coverage of open borders created an audience for alternative accounts. These critical characterisations come from identified journalistic and research sources and are recorded here as attributed assessments, not as this directory's own verdict. The site's own counter-position — that it publishes censored truths — is likewise recorded. A factual profile must hold both: the documented court and critical record, and the self-image that sustains its readership.

Alternative media pioneer: the DÖW and Austria-Forum assessment

The assessment that Unzensuriert was the starting point of Austria's right-wing alternative online media comes from Austria-Forum's AustriaWiki, drawing on the DÖW's right-wing-extremism reporting. The DÖW, the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance, is Austria's established institution for documenting right-wing extremism, and its reporting is a standard reference in Austrian media classification. When that reporting, via Austria-Forum, gives Unzensuriert a founding role in a media category, the judgement carries institutional weight beyond a single newspaper's opinion.

Being first had lasting effects. Unzensuriert established the template later Austrian alternative titles followed: a provocative independence claim, a focus on migration and Islam, a mix of agency-style news items and commentary, social-media-first distribution, and close but formally deniable proximity to a parliamentary party. Wochenblick in 2016 and the later Linz-based Report24 both operated as successors in a field Unzensuriert had defined in 2009, even where their personnel and publishers differed. Its survival while Wochenblick closed at the end of 2022 underlines its position as the durable originator of the form in Austria.

Vienna base and German-language reach

Unzensuriert is based in Vienna, the seat of its publisher and of the parliamentary milieu from which it emerged. It publishes in German, which is the precondition of its documented readership in Germany as well as Austria. It has no print edition and no broadcast arm; it is a web portal whose influence runs through search, direct visits and, above all in its formative years, Facebook sharing by party members and supporter networks.

Vienna also places the portal at the centre of the institutions it criticises: the federal government, parliament, the public broadcaster ORF — a frequent target of FPÖ and alternative-media criticism — and the national newspapers it accuses of silence. The portal's name is a claim about those institutions: that they censor, and that it does not. No verified current staffing list, audience audit or revenue figure for unzensuriert.at was established in the research for this profile, and none is invented here; alternative portals of this type rarely publish audited figures, and the historical traffic observations cited above are labelled with their period.

How researchers classify the portal

Across the sources used for this profile, the classification of Unzensuriert is unusually consistent. The directory seed calls it a right-wing alternative news portal. The European Journalism Observatory calls it an ideological outfit and part of the online power base of Austria's far right. The Reuters Institute calls it a right-wing, anti-Europe, anti-immigration website. Austria-Forum, via the DÖW, calls it the starting point of right-wing alternative online media in Austria. A reference list of mass media in Austria lists Unzensuriert.at as a right-wing news magazine published by the FPÖ — a formulation stronger than the site's own independence claim and than the publisher record, which names 1848 Medienvielfalt Verlags GmbH.

This profile follows the most precisely documented formulation: a right-wing alternative news portal founded in 2009 in Martin Graf's FPÖ circle, published by 1848 Medienvielfalt Verlags GmbH under managing director Walter Asperl, an FPÖ parliamentary-club adviser, claiming independence, focused on migration, Islam and politics. That sentence contains the disagreements rather than hiding them, and it is the sentence a reader needs before following any link to the site or citing it.

Why Unzensuriert matters

Unzensuriert matters for media history even — especially — for readers who reject its politics. It demonstrated, earlier than almost any comparable Austrian title, that a party-milieu web portal could build a durable cross-border audience outside the legacy media system, supply a governing-aspirant party with shareable content, and place its personnel inside a federal ministry. The later growth of alternative media across the German-speaking world followed a path this Vienna portal had already walked, and Austrian debates about hate speech, platform moderation, party media and press funding repeatedly return to it as an originating case.

For the directory, Unzensuriert is therefore catalogued as a significant long-running Austrian alternative news portal: founded 2009, Vienna-based, German-language, published by 1848 Medienvielfalt Verlags GmbH, born in the FPÖ parliamentary milieu, self-described as independent and uncensored, and classified by Austrian and international researchers as the starting point of the country's right-wing alternative online media. That verified record, with its claims and its documented connections side by side, is the responsible way to present it.