Germans and News

It got on my mind this week....Germans and news....and how things are assembled and understood by German society.  So I had these ten observations:

1.  The minute some German journalist utters 'scandal'....you need to stand clear for about four weeks and let some story flow.  The odds are....the story will not be a true scandal and end up as some fake scandal.  Oddly, the journalist won't go back and talk about the fake nature of this....they will instead just drop the story and pretend it never occurred.

2.  Most Germans (maybe 50-percent or more of the adult population) got their news via the nightly 8 PM ARD fifteen minute segment.  At some point in the past twenty years.....that kinda peaked out.  You can put part of the blame over the youth shifting away from public TV in general, and you can even say that there's a fair amount of disbelief or trust going on in German society today. 

3.  The shift toward the internet?  The public TV crowd was told this month to start aiming toward massive internet-built news, with video-segments.  While I agree the folks over fifty won't buy off on this delivery system.....within thirty years, they won't be around.

4.  Local news is typically limited in scale.  I can pick up my local newspaper and maybe get twenty stories per week of some marginal value, and via the public TV network (HR)....maybe another twenty stories with video-stories told.  Crime stories won't be pumped out much, not unless it was a murder or some bank robbery.

5.  Political turmoil stories?  There will be attempts to convey some misfortune or woeful event with such-and-such political party, but it rarely goes to the extreme that you see in the US.  Most Germans don't view it in some entertainment sort of way.

6.  The use of music in news segments?  Typically, on the 8 PM news....it'll never happen.  For the 9:45 PM news (particularly from ZDF), at least once a week....they've added music into the news segment.  I usually laugh when I hear it, and kinda wonder if the kid in the production room has some angle to the story told.

7. The value of BILD.  Intellectuals in Germany will say that BILD as a newspaper is worthless.  You can't tell an entire story in eight to twelve lines.  A fair number of Germans will pick up a BILD in the morning as they transit via the bus or train to work.  The plain truth is that it's designed to be read in roughly 25 minutes.  Half of it will be read in the transit, and the rest at the morning coffee pause.  While I wouldn't advise to quote off BILD....if you just wanted the plain blunt story, they do a decent job.

8.  A chaotic story unfolding....which network will you chose?  In the last five years, Germans have come to appreciate N-TV (the commercial news network) and the amount of coverage they perform on live events unfolding.  If after 9 PM at night?  You can expect the public TV crowd (ARD and ZDF) to do one brief update period, and then shut down the news cycle (they won't run until 2 AM to continually update a story to the end).  N-TV?  They will go the utter end of the emergency.  People have noticed that and it's their preference now to stick with that network. 

9.  Control over news?  There's a law or two on the books now in Germany (in 2015 and 2017) that says if an event occurs where 'suffering' has occurred, then the video of such an event.....will be forced to disappear by the authorities (it'll be removed via Facebook, YouTube, etc).  Cops can stage a home search if they need to confiscate the video you made of the scene.  They can also suggest a hate-crime in the use of some news piece, and establish control over the news.  So you may think you are getting factual information, and later learn that some significant element of the story is under government control.

10. Newspapers dying off.  The US trend?  It exists here in Germany as well.  It is difficult to predict how many German newspapers will still be existing in twenty years.