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Numbers that should make my industry pause for thought: 43 percent of all Germans believe that journalists and reporters want to deliberately mislead people with incorrect or exaggerated information.
Almost 60 percent say that “the media” doesn't do a good job when it comes to objective and non-partisan reporting.
In editorial offices there is a recurring question that is asked before a text is published: “Can you do it this way?” I heard this question for the first time thirteen years ago in a large editorial office.
At the time it was an insurance company, a check-up among colleagues or with superiors: Please read ... Am I classifying the research correctly?
Is the tone right?
Do I hit it too hard or too gently?
Have I heard all of the pages?
The question was one of the tools of the trade, because it is a quality feature of journalism that a text (or a radio report, a film) goes through several hands and heads, that at best it is examined and questioned before it is published in public.
The question “Can you do it like that?” Still exists.
But often when I talk to other German journalists, I have the feeling that for many people it is no longer a quality control, but a content control.
Is it politically correct?
Opportune?
Could someone feel offended?
Could we make someone unhappy?
Anyone who asks this way has no business in journalism.
Our readers rightly demand the opposite of us: hard research, neutral news, no deals, cheating, friendship.
No ideologies, no false consideration for the powerful.
And also no fear of being criticized yourself.
It is also important that we pat each other on the fingers as an industry as we do with government and corporations.
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It is interesting (and good) that some suppressed discussions still prevail in the end.
Anyone who had to be insulted as a “vaccine nationalist” four weeks ago because of appropriate, rational questions, has today been proven right with his criticism of the failure of the EU Commission.
Anyone who cautiously asked a week ago whether a politician would step down in view of the shockingly slow vaccinations will receive more approval today than they did a few days ago.
And after the ancient language mechanics of occasionally referring to illnesses according to where they occurred has been re-established as a result of the "British mutation" - see: Marburg fever, Ebola, Spanish and Hong Kong flu - the "Chinese virus" may also be used. be part of the Corona debate again.
This text is from WELT AM SONNTAG. We will be happy to deliver them to your home on a regular basis.
Source: Welt am Sonntag