Journalists as workers of public service are often the target of threats, intimidation, blackmail, and slander. Hate speech, especially in recent years, has crept into all spheres of society. Journalists have not remained immune to this phenomenon. Numerous studies show that this phenomenon is very worrying both for the personal well-being of journalists and for journalistic practice in general. This paper is modeled after a German study on the impact of hate speech on journalists. In this paper, the goal of the research was to determine whether there is an influence of hate speech on journalistic practice in Croatia, how often Croatian journalists encounter hate speech, and how they deal with the consequences. The research showed that journalists in Croatia more often come across hate speech aimed at journalists in general, than themselves. Also, the results showed that journalists believe that the intensity of hate speech towards journalists has increased in recent years and that hate speech is more present. Moreover, a significant number of journalists state that they used self-censorship in their journalistic work due to fear of hate speech, which is particularly worrying and can also represent a democratic problem. Prohibition and criminalization of hate speech seem like the easiest solution to this problem, but the question arises whether the right to freedom of speech, which is considered one of the fundamental human rights, is being violated. This is precisely why hate speech still remains largely unregulated.