Through the analysis of diverse genres of media discourses (TV talk shows, newspapers, TV news, and radio news items), it becomes very clear that there is no ONE strategy chosen to report on racist events and incidents or on right extremism (Matouschek et al 1995; Wodak et al 1990, 1994; Pollak and Wodak 2000; Van Dijk 1984, 1987, 1998; Wodak and Van Dijk 2000). The reporting depends on many and complex factors:

a) the audience and readers of the report or TV program
b) the interests of the elites relating to the minorities involved
c) economic and political contexts
d) the minorities involved
e) the indirectness/directness of the reporting
f) the quality of the incident; etc.

Thus, regarding the Austrian scene, the news papers are very divided: the Standard and the Profil have very clear anti-racist policies and had a very wide and precise reporting about the racist election campaign 1999 or about racist incidents against black people during the past years. The Presse, however, a quality news paper with a conservative approach reports much less or states that this is the "racism or antisemitism problem" which means that a euphemism or mitigation are used to cover such events. The Neue Kronenzeitung, a tabloid, has a very clear cut anti-immigration line. Naturally, different minorities or immigrants are reported about in different ways. Thus, Turks or black people (specifically men) are depicted as criminal, deviant and threatening (also Rumanian men) whereas immigrants from other countries seem to be less threatening. In Matouschek et al (1995) we studied the genesis of racism after 1989/90, and provided a case study about the immigrants from Rumania. The blatant racism was quite obvious in the Neue Kronenzeitung.

Antisemitism is more coded in official contexts, but also here, several newspapers have written about the Waldheim affair 1986, for example, using antisemitic stereotypes. In our study about the Waldheim affair, we finally came to the conclusion that the Presse used antisemitic utterances for progressed readers, whereas the Kronenzeitung for beginners!

Right extremism is to be viewed differently. Austria has a law against Neo Nazism and the Holocaust Denial; thus, right extremism is mostly restricted to internet sites and to fliers from Neo Nazi groups. The allusions often used by members of the Freedom Party, like famous utterances by Haider or Windholtz, signal towards a revision of history and to a balancing, for example, of the Soviet Stalinism with the extermination of Jews.

Media and the elites produce and reproduce stereotypes, beliefs, opinions and prejudices. Thus, they have an enormous responsability. Anti-discrimination guidelines would be very important and relevant here, to promote anti-racist proposals and to combat coded or blatant prejudiced beliefs and utterances as well as other semiotic, visual signs and meanings (like pictures, slogans, caricatures etc. see Reisigl and Wodak 2000, 2001)!