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Arrest of Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss on December 7th
Photo: Boris Roessler / dpa
In recent years, a journalism has emerged that is dedicated to the good cause and, in order to bring that good cause to justice, sweeps away nuance and truth like an Air Force squadron.
Everyone who takes on editorial responsibility today will sooner or later be presented with a taste of this new style.
Most of the time it's about those who think they're on the right side of history, believing that they don't have to take it so seriously with self-questioning and critical reflection.
Reporting can also be tendentious, presumptuous and sometimes even wrong, if it serves a good cause, that's the motto.
A recently published text showed me how far the circles of this activist journalism already reached when I read Christian Stöcker's column on spiegel.de with the title "The industrious phalanx of the trivializers".
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Frustrated terror plans: the industrious phalanx of trivializers A column by Christian Stöcker
In his column, Stöcker describes the many journalists who, in his opinion, downplayed the seriousness of the danger to Reich citizens and the importance of the police-organized raid on December 7, 2022, which caused a stir in national and international media.
Stöcker viewed the journalists who were critical of the raid as playing it down, justifying the attempted coup and downplaying anti-democratic tendencies.
The Berliner Zeitung, which I represent as editor-in-chief, also appeared in the column.
Stöcker mocked a text by Jesko zu Dohna, which was published in the »Berliner Zeitung« and launched the following thesis to public applause: “The raid on the prince and his revolt of pensioners is said to be the ‘biggest anti-terrorist operation in Germany of FRG history'.
Only 25 elderly, confused people were arrested.”
Stöcker channeled his anger at the text by not only attacking this subjective opinion piece, but also by disavowing the work of the entire editorial staff of the Berliner Zeitung.
He wrote: "The 'Berliner Zeitung' (not to be confused with the 'BZ'), which had degenerated under its new publisher into a kind of pro-Russian conspiracy postil, had an author with a leading role declare that 'only 25 elderly, confused people' had been arrested." Afterwards An age comparison followed between the publisher of the Berliner Zeitung and those arrested, with the aim of ridicule.
The SPIEGEL column left out the fact that the editors of the Berliner Zeitung had widely debated the police raid, that different opinion texts had been published on the subject - above all many critical ones.
In the SPIEGEL editorial office, this was probably no different in terms of proportions (see Thomas Fischer's singular opinion piece on the subject).
Denigrating the Berliner Zeitung as a medium close to the Kremlin is absurd and a blow below the belt, which particularly discredits our reporting on Russia's Ukraine war and my work as editor-in-chief.
For months I have noticed that a kind of moralizing debate culture has been establishing itself in the discussion about Russia's Ukraine war, which distinguishes between "good" and "bad" journalism and disavows any critical discussion culture as deviance.
I have already noticed similar tendencies in the discussion about the correctness of corona protection measures.
In my work, I also give space to those voices that want to discuss alternative ways of finding a peace solution.
Even those voices who assume that Russia's Ukraine war is a proxy war.
Voices that are particularly present in eastern Germany.
You don't have to share this opinion, I personally don't share it either.
But I think it would be fatal if, for moral reasons, we now ban all dissenting voices as "right-wing", "pro-Kremlin", "friendly to Putin" and not listen to them, just because we feel better about ourselves.
These voices don't just go away because we ignore them.
I would go so far as to say that discrediting these voices makes them stronger and more powerful.
In the USA one can observe what a price a society has to pay for the media ignoring contrary attitudes.
Fox News and CNN each offer their viewers their own perspective on the world.
You will look in vain for a TV station that strives for objectivity.
Polarization can also be observed in Poland.
This leads to the formation of capsules and echo chambers in which viewers are simply confirmed in their own opinions instead of dealing with shades of gray, contradictions and blind spots in their own perception of the world.
The beauty of democracy - compared to Russia - is that we have the opportunity to exchange views on reality in all its complexity.
This is real democracy and not just a simulation of democracy.
I stand for such a journalism term.
Journalism has to hurt like a stone in a shoe.
Because the world is complex, Germany is not the hub of the world.
And sometimes, as is also shown in the examples, one's own morality blocks the painful view of reality as a whole.