Friday, July 21, 2017

The Pretender News Media

Die Welt carried a shocker of a story today....over a study which the Media School of Hamburg and the University of Leipzig carried out.

The study?  Did German news media organizations do a good job of journalism during the 2013 to present on the asylum/migrant/immigration crisis?

Short answer:  no.

They were more of a promotion crew, rather than journalists.  The independent survey noted that they were uncritical (not just casually, but full-blown), and simply hung a sign out...."welcome".  The idea of being critical?  Non-existent.

The piece of the story which I found interesting....the study even noted that most of what was said during the past four years....simply were words of the political elite....repeated by the journalists.

The study crew even went as far as suggesting that journalists don't understand their professional role or the function of the news media.

I'm guessing the ARD and ZDF big-wigs are sitting there and trying hard not to read over the assessment by the Hamburg school and the Leipzig university.  They hate criticism, and in this case....the professors are taking the 'kids' to the wood-shed and laying on a fair amount of criticism.

What happens now?  Nothing.

It's done.  You can't fix this.  You can't retract the stories.  You can't suddenly say you discovered the stupidity of your analysis.  You just keep going forward.  Kinda sad, but that's the German method.  The only shocker for me is that it took three years for the survey crew to get around to this and finally pronounce a judgement.  I saw it in 2014 and sat mostly amused.  The 'kids' felt that no one would ever come and judge them.....and they were wrong.

I would also note.....if they weren't critical over that particular topic....what else are they lacking clear judgement or analysis upon?  Any guesses?  I don't think the Hamburg or Leipzig folks are finished on analysis....they might want to continue.

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