One of the best things about learning German has been the access to German news media. I find Suedeutsch Zeitung and a few others hold themselves to a higher quality than almost any english newspaper I've read. It's good to see english media take note!
As a german, its nice to hear something like that since people here also complain about the quality of journalism going down. People are also complaining that public broadcasting (and having to pay for it) but I think that they are the one of the reasons we have good journalism as the set a standard which you will lose audience to if you report too much bias or show too much advertising.
This is certainly true. One channel broadcasts the evening news (Abendschau) from 20 or so years ago and you can clearly see how diligently they try to adhere to journalistic objectivity (in choice of adjectives for example) whereas today it seems they don't even try it anymore.
Having a public broadcaster means nothing. We (Poland) also have one but the quality of their websites and TV channels was always painfully average and since 2015 it's outright propaganda.
Well, German public TV and radio isn’t nearly as good as the newspaper cited in the article. Compared with BBC - it’s certainly is not a great example of spending public funds.
I'd like to object. True, the mainstream channels ARD and ZDF show a little bit too many quiz shows and music shows - and the main local radio stations are very lean on interesting content. But there is a bunch of public TV channels and radio stations that provide high-quality content - 3sat, arte (culture), ARD-alpha (science, education), Phoenix (politics, documentaries), Deutschlandfunk, Bayern 2, Bayern 5, and many more.
And yet most of the money I pay the GEZ, sorry, for the Rundfunkbeitrag, goes to exactly ARD/ZDF. I have neither TV nor Radio, but I'd happily pay what I do to the stations you mentioned. But between quiz shows, reality tv, football licenses and badly researched shows like Frontal 21 I hate paying.
These stations are all part of ARD (actually a "conglomerate" of Rundfunkanstalten der Länder) and ZDF (except Deutschlandfunk, which is a separate entity). So yeah, you already pay for these stations. If you'd watch / listen to them, they'd probably get more attention from the managers and thus the content will be pushed more into the mass channels. Actually, some of the stations are more like incubators for new concepts and shows that they hope to put into the main/mass channels (though others are special interest channels).
Exactly. And worst of all, all the good things they do are to be found on tv & radio channels the average person does hardly consume or at times when nobody watches tv.
And this, I think, is highly problematic as it distorts the way Germans see their country dramatically. Many Germans, I believe, think they fulfill their 'democratic duty' by watching the 'Tagesschau' (the news at 8 pm)
As far as politics is concerned, this shows offers almost zero journalistic value. It's only politicians selling their agenda to the audience (the same goes for prime time talk shows). The only good thing about it is that all parties get enough time to bring their point across and non-political groups are also allowed to have their say. The problem, however, is that it is not in the interest of any party/NGO to actually inform the viewers. They all only include facts when it suits their agenda. What the audience is left with is an incomplete picture of the situation. And based on this (and not well well-researched lists of the pros and cons to the solutions proposed) they cast their vote. Of course, the public broadcasters do also provide these missing information. But you have to listen to Deutschlandfunk radio, search out special documentaries on Arte which are broadcasted at irregular times or watch political discussions at Phoenix at times when you want to go to bed.
The Tagesthemen (which is the late edition of the Tagesschau) is already much better. Some time ago they had a very good comment on mass surveilance that was totally on point. And the average, not Tagesthemen-watching person? They still think "meh .. I've got nothing to hide".
UK "journalism" is simply stunningly bad now. When I think back 20 years ago the gap now is huge. I don't agree with the politics of The Telegraph but leaving that aside its slide is so sad. They now run stories about characters in TV programs as though they are actually real. All UK papers are now so bad I'd advise not reading any, including the FT which is simply terrible. They cannot die soon enough, the damage presently done by pandering to big bank advertisers is huge.
I think if you re-incarnated and showed the editor of the Telegraph from 1950 the web-site, just the difference between the background colour of "sponsored" stories versus actual stories, he'd blow his brains out. Never mind the actual content.
Do German papers do this, mix paid and actual content and attempt to show the paid as similar to real? Although this is nowhere near as bad as The Telegraph following the instructions of disgruntled banker advertisers:
The Guardian[0] has done some great reporting in recent years[1]:
Notable scoops include the 2011 News International phone hacking scandal, in particular the hacking of murdered English teenager Milly Dowler's phone. The investigation led to the closure of the UK's biggest selling Sunday newspaper, and one of the highest circulation newspapers in the world, the News of the World. The newspaper also released news of the secret collection of Verizon telephone records held by US President Barack Obama's administration in June 2013, and subsequently revealed the existence of the PRISM surveillance program after it was leaked to the paper by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. In 2016, it led the investigation into the Panama Papers, exposing the then British Prime Minister David Cameron's links to offshore bank accounts.
No mention of The Guardian? I have a pretty high opinion of their newsroom, and donate regularly. They’ve been doing solid investigative work lately, even on American topics.
Big problem with the Guardian is not making clear enough visual differentiation between their blogs — where anyone can write any old shit — and their actual reporting and editorial
Opinion pieces have a bright orange banner and use that same colour elsewhere in the articles, it's also used on the links to the opinion pieces. What else could they be doing to point out the difference? How could they make it more clear than heavy use of colour coding?
It was such a stupid decision for them to combine their opinion and editorial section with Comment Is Free. The latter being pretty trashy most of the time.
I think the only real way nowadays is whether /commentisfree/ appears in the URL and it isn't clearly marked as an Editorial.
I have a hypothesis that if the breadcrumb says "home › opinion" with no third level then you're in CIF, but I have no real evidence that that is actually reliable.
I did and still do have a high opinion of the guardian, but that perception has been shifted somewhat when one of the senior tech editors tried to argue with me that foss is dead and no one cares about it anymore...
3 or 4 years ago (i am not sure when this exactly happend) they did a "redesign" - and since then many hard topics and inconvienient stories where left behind for soft topics and lifestyle articles.
I really enjoyed reading it but right now I won't bother most of the time.
They even changed their, in my opinion hilarious, but sarcastic album reviews to album reviews which sound like a rehash of the PR text from the record company.
The most important thing is the picture of the lead journalists at the end of the story and how they "connect to this story". And the guy who writes 3 pages about his cooking. And the boring "I am so edgy and showing two sides of my personality" PR interview with a celebrity. Yesterday I've read one of these interviews with the question "do you enjoy wearing suits?"
To be fair, sometimes they still have well made articles, but many times it is just boring feel-good-journalism.
The same thought crossed my mind the other day, but thinking through it I remembered, for print journalism: the Financial Times (which I think has a claim on 'best journalism in English'), The Guardian, and The Economist. In the U.S. a country ~4 times the size, there is only the New York Times and the Washington Post on that level (IMHO; there's also Time, Bloomberg, and others; and we're omitting Reuters, the AP, and many more in other categories).
I think the situation in the UK is similar to the US for print journalism (whatever that means these days), with a few large blocks:
* A few top-notch publications
* Far right propaganda, substantially from Murdoch / News Corp.
* A bunch of middling, substantially ineffectual stuff
(I know these are broad generalizations, with many exceptions.)
The Economist is terrible. It's just the same neo-liberal slant on everything. Read one article of theirs and you are done.
FT is really weak. Go check out the FT comments some time - none of their readers understand how markets work nor how prices are set. You know why? Because they read the FT and the FT never talks about any of this. All they have is what appears to be in depth but is simply parroting numbers.
Guardian I have more time for but they are frustrating. They tell the truth right up to the point where it comes to talking about the banks and how land is used to extract labour, then they melt away. Which in the UK is everything.
UK journalism has fallen so far. Telegraph for example you could label propaganda - it's right wing. But it's so trashy now. And this is mirrored across all publications.
One big difference between The Economist and German papers like the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) is: The Economist is capable of admitting that it was wrong in the past. The financial news section of the FAZ, on the other hand, will deride anyone who does not agree with them ideologically, and then, when it turns out they had been wrong from the get go, pretend they were on the other side of the argument.
I have the feeling journalists in Germany still think there is something like completely objective reporting. A kind of gold standard you achieve by adhering to a certain method, with everyone coming to the one and only correct conclusion. Anyone who does not must be inept or not a real journalist in the first place.
> The Economist is terrible. It's just the same neo-liberal slant on everything
That's a really common prejudice, and not born out by the actual paper, in my view. As just one example, in the US presidential elections, The Economist has endorsed G W Bush, but then Kerry, Obama, Obama, and Clinton.
It's still the best newspaper around, in my view, for concise, opinionated updates on a wide range of global issues.
FT is better than WSJ, but that's not saying much.
Guardian has some good reporting, and is worth supporting, though I disagree with some of their editorialising.
Unfortunately they do mix paid content in. I built it in to one of their apps after much complaining about what it was going to do to the user experience, but they have to pay for the publication somehow.
Interesting to read that, after what role german media/newspapers played in 2015. Especially since even journalists of well-respected german newspapers admitted the lack of critical journalism during this time.
What are you talking about? You speak as if some terrible catastrophe happened in 2015 that has led to untold human suffering in which the media was complicit by turning a blind eye.
Instead what happened was that Germany took in a several hundred thousand refugees and migrants, which was a logistical challenge that was met.
The cultural and integration challenge was initially under discussed but hardly relevant to the immediate humanitarian issue.
Crucially though, that under discussion was quickly self corrected. The big center left media organisations have clearly talked about these issues. And not years after the fact but pretty quickly.
The idea that somehow collectively the left, the German media or some other institutions have turned a blind eye towards the challenges implied is a complete myth.
For example, in the biggest left weekly newspaper, Die Zeit, pretty much immediately after the cologne harassment events in January 2016, the headline article on sexist Arab culture.
Your article is from 2016, while I was walking about 2015. This is pretty important since the events from sylvester 2015 were an important changing point. But please let's do not discuss single articles, it is more about the general sentiment the media wanted to convey. E.g. the infamous "Dunkeldeutschland".
But it's crucial. It shows that if there was an initial overreaction along the lines you claim, it was corrected rather quickly from within the media landscape. I would say that it took a while for the media to figure out how to talk about the challenges without giving any credence to xenophobia.
That shows a fundamentally healthy media landscape to me. After all you are able to cite two absolute mainstream papers, one conservative, one centre left to argue for your critique.
And while that critique is valid, I still wonder what exactly you are talking about. It's not like something utterly terrible happened in 2015.
The FAZ article explicitly also mentioned that there was a real worry about right wing violence and extremism in the wake of the refugees arrival. That's not media propaganda. Refugees have been overwhelmingly the victims, not the perpetrators of violence.
If you remember, that is what Dunkeldeutschland in Gaucks speech explicitly referred to: Violence against refugees. If you look at 2015, and the media reaction, without the context of Solingen and NSU, you are missing the context of the debate.
This could have been way worse. And my guess is that if Germany had a strong Fox News or Daily Mail it probably would have been.
Really glad Sueddeutsche Zeitung is getting international attention. They traditionally were vastly important for the intellectual life in Munich (e.g. many families had a subscription for the printed version and get it delivered to their doors in the morning). They do do excellent jorunalism, including on the local area around Munich. So, even though I have lived abroad, I am still a paying subscriber.
Quality journalism is useful and great, as are the investigative projects they have been engaged in. Moral? Do support quality journalism in your area if you can.
> Do support quality journalism in your area if you can.
And to be fair, the "clickbaiters" from Buzzfeed and friends also do some high quality investigative pieces, financed by the mentioned clickbait. Makes me wonder if this will be the future of journalism...
> the "clickbaiters" from Buzzfeed and friends also do some high quality investigative pieces, financed by the mentioned clickbait. Makes me wonder if this will be the future of journalism...
In a way it's the history of journalism. Much of what we take for granted now has long served the same purpose. The NY Times added op-eds in the 1960s as a way to drive readership with provocation.[0] They added many of their non-news sections in the 1970s, IIRC the history, as a strategy to drive readership and revenue in order to fund hard news - the click-bait of the time, now normalized and therefore invisible to us.
For most newspapers, classified ads long served the same purpose; craigslist and other Internet resources are possibly the leading reason for financial troubles in journalism today.
> For most newspapers, classified ads long served the same purpose; craigslist and other Internet resources are possibly the leading reason for financial troubles in journalism today.
Well, that's inherent in capitalism: something inefficient (which non-instant, non-searchable classifieds certainly are, compared to CL and friends) gets driven out of the market in favor of the more efficient solution. Generally, this principle works fine from an evolutionary point of view.
The problem is that we as a society have not yet figured out what to do with the losses that originate from the implosion of the "obsolete" infrastructure. With the manual labor replaced by machines in the early industrial history and even with pre-Internet modernizations, societies could shift the labor resources into other jobs that could absorb the load. At the moment, however, there are no labor-intensive "new" jobs available any more for all those whose jobs have been/are/will be replaced by automation, and we do not yet have a concept what to do with societally important stuff such as journalism.
This is a significant factor in current politics, actually - the "flyover states" voted for Trump, and "bloggers" without any journalistic knowledge or even journalistic ethics are a massive counterforce to actual journalists and newspapers... after all, it's easier to spew out fake stuff and nonsense fabricated in minutes than real journalistic articles backed by sometimes thousands of hours of research and work.
The Internet drastically lowered entry barriers (no matter if for journalists, for politicians or for startups), maybe more so than any technological progress before in history... and that has its upsides as well as its downsides.
Where do you think they will cut costs when their clickbait income disappoints sometime in the future? Also, I think that given enough financial interest, media businesses like that can be pressured into not publishing/investigating something. They won't take on big financial interests, because in the end, readers are their product, not their reporting.
So I sure hope that will not be the future of journalism.
> They won't take on big financial interests, because in the end, readers are their product, not their reporting.
That's the problem we have with nearly all media businesses these days. The exception are the various public media institutions (eg NPR, BBC, ARD/ZDF) because they do not depend on advertising, but they are subjected to pressure by politicians in leadership positions...
So what is the answer to the question how a German Newspaper became the go-to place for leaks like the Paradise Papers? The article doesn't explain anything. It just states what happened as a list of totally unrelated things.
It seems pretty clear that there is a reason why they got the leaks - they paid attention:
> Obermayer told me that his source for the Panama Papers, whom he refers to as John Doe, had tried to get the attention of several large international outlets, including a U.S. paper, before he got in touch with him. “The leaker didn’t say, ‘Here’s the biggest leak in history, are you interested?’ ” Obermayer said. The first documents that John Doe offered him were not journalistically compelling, at first glance. But Obermayer recognized that they had come from Mossack Fonseca, which he knew operated in extreme secrecy. “I thought, If somebody has obtained data from inside Mossack Fonseca, this could be really interesting,” he said. Knowing the implications of the firm’s name, Obermayer speculated, may have been why he ended up with the Panama Papers.
I once read an interesting article about a journalist who had reported on a lot of corruption in FIFA.
He asked a question at a press conference to the effect of "there are a lot of rumours you are corrupt, do you have any comment?" - but his motivation to ask that question wasn't that he expected a good answer. Rather, he was advertising his interest in the story to anyone who had info they'd like to leak. And just like that, he starts getting tips and leaked documents.
Süddeutsche Zeitung is in a similar position. By handling previous leaks well they've advertised several things: (a) They have the knowledge to recognise the importance of such documents, (b) they consider such content within the remit of their paper, (c) they won't bury the story out of fear of the rich and powerful (or on the advice of a risk-averse legal team) and (d) they can do an adequate job of OpSec and source protection.
For a leaker, the choice between Süddeutsche Zeitung and Teen Vogue is obvious.
I'm not sure how one evaluates that they do good OpSec? Even firstlook failed and accidentally got Reality Winner arrested. So how does one know? Personally the question of OpSec gets more intense when A) I learn they let in a reporter from the New Yorker in to do, well, basically it's a Cribbs episode. And 2) when I learn that the group managing critical leaks is on the same floor as everyone else. Could you please protect your sources at least as well as Apple protects the Animoji release?
This is not true. There are quite a number of reasons to be found in the article. They are just not listed for you using bullet points.
E.g.:
Focus on investigative journalism - << After publishing the Panama Papers, in 2016, Krach declared Der Spiegel’s monopoly on investigative journalism in Germany over. Part of this push, he said, arose from the need to secure the future of the paper. “The only strategy to survive in the long run in this very complicated and economically difficult environment is that we have to differentiate ourselves from others, so that people can find in our newspaper something they cannot find anywhere else,” Krach said.>>
And then further arguments: Success with the Panama papers, etc. etc.
They have them because they published the Panama Papers before. They had them because they recognised the name of a secretive law firm and took the John Doe seriously, which other organisations had not.
Joking aside: Probably because they did a good job with the Panama Papers. So it's a mix of strategic investment in investigate journalism and a bit of luck.
Actually they do a pretty bad job. Most of the stuff they have is only available to subscribers [0] (Watch out for SZPlus). This topic is too big to put it behind a paywall, but in Germany the whole thing is already out of the focus of MSM. [1] (CTRL-F : Paradise)
> but in Germany the whole thing is already out of the focus of MSM
because in Germany the coalition bartering takes precedence at the moment (where, like the election of the catholic Pope, every tiny signal is massively amplified to keep the buzz going), and it doesn't exactly help that Trump spews out new nonsense every other day, and the neo-nazis from the AfD can be counted upon to do the same if there is nothing newsworthy at the moment...
And the AfD is actually a major part of the problem - they have shifted the discourse from "ultra rich vs poor" to "everyone against Muslims/refugees" pretty successfully and that's shame enough.
Not to give the AfD (German right wing 'tea party') any benefits, but the necessary discussion of social allocation of income and such is one that is buried under crap news in Germany as a long standing tradition.
Your analysis is on the point, but I believe that the AfD is more of a symptom and not much of a cause.
Precisely. Most Germans still remember how the socialist GDR failed, and seem to infer from this that anything that is not neoliberalism is bound to fail (or, alternatively, a pipedream of some delusional leftist students that's not worth trying).
At its best, the New Yorker presents well thought-out pieces with an artistic flair. At the worst, you get this kind of "action painting with words" nonsense which adds up to nothing and goes nowhere. I wouldn't mind if they at least added a link at the bottom to some actual information, with a a little note saying, "Oops, sorry we disappeared up our own bungs again!"
All great, but one thing to question is who influences the "International Consortium of Investigative Journalists".
ICIJ was launched as a project of the Center for Public Integrity, which is funded by i.a. The Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation and a host of globalist foundations.
No, and they won't. Reasons certainly include monopolization of the information but also protection of the leakers and others. Protecting the sources is one of the key things good journalism has to do.
some digital proof would be more convincing, like "at time X we got archive with merklehash H of all documents (https://opentimestamps.org/), and this information Y is from this source file hash F proved by this tree T".
For proving what? - I haven't seen anybody that their reports are inaccurate. The only possible critisicm might be that they maybe don't tell everything to protect individuals. (Which I don't believe they do) But even there it won't help if they publish everything as we can't have a prove it's everything.
I think this is more a decision for a country rather than a newspaper. A raid on a newspaper like in England with the Guardian is pretty much unthinkable here.
German newspapers are just as biased as those in other countries. Süddeutsche is no exception.
Do you know newspapers in other countries? Having lived extensively in the UK and in Germany I can not agree. Imagine BILD being a moderate high quality newspaper.
Think I'm exagerating? Imagine BILD frontpage with constitutional judges pictured and headline "Volksfeinde":
If they weren't so far lost they would stop to applaud the German peoples' disdain for state surveillance. It makes Germany a safer base of operations than the US or UK.
Did anyone else notice the claim that “The computers had never been connected to the Internet,” followed in the next paragraph by “On another screen, Obermayer opened iHub, the encrypted Facebook-like forum that the ICIJ created to make collaboration easier across borders”? Something doesn’t add up here...
