Negative media award: "Golden Potato" goes to bourgeois media for "polarizing" identity debate

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"Golden Potato": Award for "particularly discriminatory reporting"

Photo: New German media makers

The Association of New German Media Makers is awarding the negative “Golden Potato” prize this year to the bourgeois media for their debate on “Identity Politics”: the discussion in 2021 was excessive and irrelevant, according to the jury's statement.

Bourgeois media would have "normalized right-wing extremist theses and made them socially acceptable".

In 2021, the award went to “almost all media in the middle-class spectrum”: “from taz to FAZ, from ARD to ntv, from Deutschlandradio to Radio Energy”. The jury also named a contribution by SPIEGEL with the title question "Does identity politics divide society?" In the text, SPIEGEL authors deal with current discussions on discrimination against minorities.

"Identity politics" is not an issue that has to do with everyday life "and that nobody really understands", according to the jury of the "Golden Potato". With catchphrases such as "Cancel Culture", "Threatened freedom of expression" and "Racism against whites", it was still widely discussed in 2021. Almost all media in Germany asked "whether People of Color and black people don't go too far with their anti-racism". Right-wing extremist forums have been harassed against minorities for a long time. The question of the division in society is therefore "anything but harmless".

The "Golden Potato" is a negative prize that the Association of New German Media Makers has been awarding since 2018, according to its own statements, "for particularly discriminatory reporting".

Members can therefore submit proposals, the jury consists of the association's board of directors.

The 2021 award ceremony will take place on October 23.

ime