Have failed in German Newspapers during the refugee influx? A study seems to confirm this. Their conclusion: The media were in the service of government and to stir vigorously the drum for the culture of welcome.
The media are to blame, they have accompanied the issue of refugees 2015/16 national educational within the meaning of Angela Merkel. And you have to explain your core business, distant, complex developments, not perceived. Instead, they have operated in government policy and the people of the culture of welcome downright prescribed.
The editor as teacher
The accusation is not new, but so far always from the right-wing AfD-corner. What is new is that now a serious, scientific study of German Newspapers and their refugee reporting criticized massively. After evaluation of thousands of newspaper articles, especially in the four major media Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), The world and the Bild-Zeitung, the authors of the nearly 200-page study to come to the conclusion, Mr. editor and Mrs editor would have done as a people, to educators, to report to instead of critical.
Hungary in September 2015: thousands of refugees are on the way in the direction of Germany
Because of the large-scale investigation of the Hamburg Media School and the University of Leipzig are also the evaluations of 85 regional Newspapers is based, may be placed in the study representativeness. It was funded by the trade Union close to the Otto-Brenner-Stiftung. Who was the General Tenor of the authors, reported between February 2015 and March 2016 critical of the refugee influx, which was under the General suspicion of strangers the enemy to be.
With moral Impetus
Also views of the part of the population, “which were not included in many of the enforcement policy reasons, are skeptical to critical of, persecuted”, according to the authors, “seriously in the debate.” The welcoming culture, the Federal government sponsored, had been transfigured by the print media to a “magic word”. Also striking has been intensively reported morally. The refugee issue had been raised with “too much bleeding-heart sentimentality, and a few critical Inquiries to appropriate”.
In fact, only six percent were among the 35,000 peer-reviewed articles authentic reports, or reports researched, been to find. This finding is especially true for the three major media sources, SZ, FAZ and the world. Every fifth Text of these leaves was commenting on – an “unusually high proportion,” says the Manager responsible for the study, the media scholar Michael Haller.
Critical distance is not kept
Criminally in the reporting, in particular, the main actors of the Grand theme has been neglected. On the helper groups, and various institutions that took care of the refugees, accounted for all of 3.5 per cent of the editorial contributions. Also experts, which may be, for example, on ethnic characteristics in the Incoming would have asked, were registered in one of the 100 articles. Instead, the society had been treated in a highly controversial issue almost in the abstract as the subject of institutionalised politics.
Enthusiasm for refugees who arrive in September 2015 in Berlin
43 percent of all in the investigation period, spoken actors were according to the study, representatives of the Federal government, of ministries, of the parties. Green politicians were twice as likely to be on the subject of via a newspaper report comment on how politicians of the Left. The AfD, in the meantime, in a large number of parliaments represented, not in front of came in handy (0.1 percent).
Politics and the press in the “closed room”
The study authors speak of a “strong domination of the political Elite”, the dominate with the help of the media (in this case, the print media). And clearly, in the sense of the two coalition parties. Critical distance is not kept in half of the analysed contributions. Worse still, politicians and the media had moved on to the topic of refugees in exactly the “closed-space”, “the many marginalised in their comments with ‘Mainstream’ and ‘system press’ labeling”.
Start of the welcome culture: Angela Merkel as a favorite motif for refugees and their Selfies
As a Whole, the investigated Newspapers have reported 83 per cent very or fairly positive about the refugee issue and thus the mission of the welcome culture as a whole. About sceptics and their arguments, was reported to be on the edge.
A study with the aftermath
The study and reading times, writes zeit.de “as the scientists had researched the request afterwards to grab the industry by the collar and vigorously once more shake”. Time Online was not involved in the study. The impression is to be accounted for stronger, if the authors of night and the media reaction to the Cologne new year’s eve Assault of young male migrants, girls and women. This violation of a “welcome culture” has led many to a correction in the attitude to the refugee issue. The criticism is growing – also in the media. “It seems,” the authors created to make up, “than wanted to a lot of journalists now überfleißig what they had failed to do previously.”
Even if the study is not free of contradiction – if you have to, for example, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in the “many” comments against an unlimited influx of refugees calls – the investigation of a sound of a slap all the same for the media. The even more painful for the industry, as this is the case, the statements of the study in the core on the TV coverage. Even if it has not been analysed for reasons of time, separately.