And authorities should keep “critical media” at arm’s length, according to the leaked internal memo circulated by Interior Ministry spokesman Christoph Pölzl.
Pölzl has confirmed sending out the email, but described the message as “suggestions and comments” which “had no mandatory or even instructional character”.
The internal email to staff accused the mainstream newspapers of bias, and singled out the left-leaning Der Standard and Kurier and the weekly newsmagazine Falter for “very one-sided and negative reporting about the ministry and the police”.
Police should be transparent about sex attackers, and reveal their nationality and residential status, the government believes.
Interior Minister Herbert Kickl of the Freedom Party (FPO), which serves as the junior partner in Austria’s new coalition government, is behind the move, according to Deutsche Welle, the German public broadcaster.
In an e-mail to law enforcement, the guidelines explicitly request that sex offenders’ “status of residence and whether they are an asylum seeker” be made public.
“This comes from the background of maximum transparency and the existing, justified interest from the population and the media,” Pölzl noted.
Austrian media reported that the interior ministry is now asking police to “proactively” release more information on sex offenders, in particular, “especially with crimes committed in public with considerable degree of violence or coercion or when there is no connection between the perpetrator and the victim”.
Immigrants now make up almost half of the suspects in criminal cases in Austria, and more than half in the capital city of Vienna.