The sinister abuse of power by the press
I don't know if there was ever a code that said newspapers and the press had to be neutral. Even on the covers of most of the organs it is stated that they are partisan and can be assigned to a political current.
This has always been known and it is nothing new. But what has happened in recent years and how much the press has moved away from being a corrective and often distorting the truth for its own purposes is a new quality that has to give one pause.
By Serdar Somuncu
This has always been known and it is nothing new. But what has happened in recent years and how much the press has moved away from being a corrective and often distorting the truth for its own purposes is a new quality that has to give one pause.
By Serdar Somuncu
The usual suspects from Bild-Zeitung to Spiegel Magazine are particularly unscrupulous. But the Süddeutsche, the TAZ and the Frankfurter Allgemeine, newspapers that were known for being tendentious, but not for portraying things in a smarmy way that are different from what they actually are and thus playing politics, are now also in line with this in no way inferior to others.
For example, in the Ukraine conflict, the Bild newspaper takes a clear position. She is on the side of Ukraine. It is unclear whether this is because deputy editor-in-chief Paul Ronzheimer has an almost obsessive soft spot for Ukraine or the editorial team feels in some way committed to Zelensky's politics. In any case, it has been trying to make massive propaganda since the beginning of the war, repeatedly through false reports or obvious lies. The Ukrainian offensive had already been imminent several times and the war had almost been won until it could no longer be hidden that Ukraine was hopelessly inferior in this conflict and that only massive arms support, which would at the same time mean an escalation of the conflict, Ukraine could help you win. So the Bild newspaper changed course and demanded arms deliveries that became increasingly absurd, and justified these demands with sometimes ridiculous headlines, such as "These tanks save lives."
The Bild newspaper also played a very questionable role during the Corona period. While those responsible, especially the then editor-in-chief and right-wing commentator Julian Reichelt, who today persistently denies that he was ever on behalf of those subject to compulsory vaccination, initially supported the government's measures, this changed at the latest after it became clear that a considerable part of them The population was against the government's corona measures, as was the attitude of Bild and they suddenly found themselves on the side of the protesters. This astonishing opportunity is not a specific feature of the Bild newspaper alone; other magazines, such as Spiegel, have been practicing this dubious type of journalism for a long time.
In the conflict over Israel and Gaza, for example, many organs are competing to alternately side with Israel or support the Palestinians. The reason for this is that magazines and newspapers today no longer base their content on credibility and verifiability, but only value clicks and subscriber numbers. And they have now specialized in changing topics in such a way that it is guaranteed that there is enough interest in them and that readers take out a subscription or pay for the content they want to receive.
The famous clickbait about ever new Corona variants that threaten us or arms deliveries that are supposed to bring peace or terrorist attacks that are supposed to be used as a reason for criticism of Israel are now transparent and can be read at the latest when you have taken out a subscription. but they still work great. Because most people have not yet understood that we live in an age of falsification, in which it is not really verifiable and understandable who is spreading what news and when and why. In addition, artificial intelligence means it is no longer clear whether the images you see are real. The corpse transports in Bergamo or asylum seekers being beaten on the streets, as well as images of war zones or other events, can now also be faked and still remain in circulation, so that if they are distributed sufficiently, they develop into a truth that most people believe in, because They don't expect their trust to be treated so brazenly.
You simply have to admit that times have changed and that the power of the media has increased thanks to the Internet and social media.
The higher frequency of news also contributes to the fact that we are less and less able to distinguish between what we actually really need to get an idea of the situation and what we are given in order to take over the image from others want to create in us. That makes a lot of things more complicated. Because a society that does not know whether the information it receives comes from purpose-oriented sources is a highly disoriented society with which, if in doubt, you can do whatever you want. At the moment, manipulation is actually a skill of those who have the greatest reach. And they use this ability to the point of ridicule. For example, when the Bild newspaper warned just a few weeks ago that we would have a brutally hot summer of a century, other magazines wrote that the ice age could return. So where do you position yourself in this web of half-truths, lies and vague rumors?
This is certainly a question that is more difficult to answer today than ever before. While in the past one could see how something like a truth was distilled from the quotient of the average due to the extensive differentiation and knowledge of the news on offer, today it is added that many editorial teams also copy from each other and the sources they need are themselves falsified . Many people dare to get their information from secondary sources such as Instagram or Twitter and simply quote them. It doesn't need to be explained that this doesn't meet any journalistic standards and doesn't stand up to any real revision. And yet it is rarely questioned. Our consumer behavior has become so immediate that we rarely check and perceive faster than we can judge.
And yet this results in campaigns that lead to indictments and trials in which in the end it is not even important how the whole thing turned out, but actually only the path to get there is important. Extreme cases like that of the comedian Luke Mockridge or the band Rammstein have shown how quickly a dynamic can arise in which personal perception, misguided assessments and hasty conclusions lead to an exponential interest that suddenly clicks for the beneficiaries of this development and subscriber numbers. By fueling further reports and maintaining campaigns, interest is maintained and leads to weeks of reporting on things that essentially cannot be clarified. In the end, the verdict of guilt and innocence is left to the courts and not to the witnesses.
The fact that the press plays a very inglorious role in this case and contributes to the fact that our ability to judge becomes more and more dependent on the evidence that we obtain from the sources of lobbyists and interest groups is a fatal development, the extent of which we cannot foresee at the moment. In any case, in the long term it leads to opinions losing value as long as they are artificially generated and attitudes hardly gaining in consistency if they are constantly reproduced in the community of people who think like themselves.
One of the essence of capitalism is the temptation of the individual to consume. The individual should think that he is special. And so you entice him to get what adorns his specialness. Half-knowledge has become a tolerable accessory, and belief in outrageous claims has become a monstrance that one carries in front of oneself to show that one is following the right idols. The knowledge that one possesses in order to have a well-founded belief is now only a chain of superficial perception.
In the end, the one who wants to make us believe without us knowing enough wants to seduce us into doing what he asks of us. We should read his newspaper or buy his magazines. We are supposed to accept a temporary truth. And as long as our interest and curiosity is satisfied, we don't care whether what we read there is true or false. We surrender to the lie because it satisfies our urges and saturates our attention. But in reality we are also capitulating to the opacity of an industry that is concerned with nothing other than our judgment, which in this way generates purchasing power.
03/18/24
©Serdar Somuncu
Current program "Soul Heil" can now be downloaded in the shop
*Serdar Somuncu is an actor and director
For example, in the Ukraine conflict, the Bild newspaper takes a clear position. She is on the side of Ukraine. It is unclear whether this is because deputy editor-in-chief Paul Ronzheimer has an almost obsessive soft spot for Ukraine or the editorial team feels in some way committed to Zelensky's politics. In any case, it has been trying to make massive propaganda since the beginning of the war, repeatedly through false reports or obvious lies. The Ukrainian offensive had already been imminent several times and the war had almost been won until it could no longer be hidden that Ukraine was hopelessly inferior in this conflict and that only massive arms support, which would at the same time mean an escalation of the conflict, Ukraine could help you win. So the Bild newspaper changed course and demanded arms deliveries that became increasingly absurd, and justified these demands with sometimes ridiculous headlines, such as "These tanks save lives."
The Bild newspaper also played a very questionable role during the Corona period. While those responsible, especially the then editor-in-chief and right-wing commentator Julian Reichelt, who today persistently denies that he was ever on behalf of those subject to compulsory vaccination, initially supported the government's measures, this changed at the latest after it became clear that a considerable part of them The population was against the government's corona measures, as was the attitude of Bild and they suddenly found themselves on the side of the protesters. This astonishing opportunity is not a specific feature of the Bild newspaper alone; other magazines, such as Spiegel, have been practicing this dubious type of journalism for a long time.
In the conflict over Israel and Gaza, for example, many organs are competing to alternately side with Israel or support the Palestinians. The reason for this is that magazines and newspapers today no longer base their content on credibility and verifiability, but only value clicks and subscriber numbers. And they have now specialized in changing topics in such a way that it is guaranteed that there is enough interest in them and that readers take out a subscription or pay for the content they want to receive.
The famous clickbait about ever new Corona variants that threaten us or arms deliveries that are supposed to bring peace or terrorist attacks that are supposed to be used as a reason for criticism of Israel are now transparent and can be read at the latest when you have taken out a subscription. but they still work great. Because most people have not yet understood that we live in an age of falsification, in which it is not really verifiable and understandable who is spreading what news and when and why. In addition, artificial intelligence means it is no longer clear whether the images you see are real. The corpse transports in Bergamo or asylum seekers being beaten on the streets, as well as images of war zones or other events, can now also be faked and still remain in circulation, so that if they are distributed sufficiently, they develop into a truth that most people believe in, because They don't expect their trust to be treated so brazenly.
You simply have to admit that times have changed and that the power of the media has increased thanks to the Internet and social media.
The higher frequency of news also contributes to the fact that we are less and less able to distinguish between what we actually really need to get an idea of the situation and what we are given in order to take over the image from others want to create in us. That makes a lot of things more complicated. Because a society that does not know whether the information it receives comes from purpose-oriented sources is a highly disoriented society with which, if in doubt, you can do whatever you want. At the moment, manipulation is actually a skill of those who have the greatest reach. And they use this ability to the point of ridicule. For example, when the Bild newspaper warned just a few weeks ago that we would have a brutally hot summer of a century, other magazines wrote that the ice age could return. So where do you position yourself in this web of half-truths, lies and vague rumors?
This is certainly a question that is more difficult to answer today than ever before. While in the past one could see how something like a truth was distilled from the quotient of the average due to the extensive differentiation and knowledge of the news on offer, today it is added that many editorial teams also copy from each other and the sources they need are themselves falsified . Many people dare to get their information from secondary sources such as Instagram or Twitter and simply quote them. It doesn't need to be explained that this doesn't meet any journalistic standards and doesn't stand up to any real revision. And yet it is rarely questioned. Our consumer behavior has become so immediate that we rarely check and perceive faster than we can judge.
And yet this results in campaigns that lead to indictments and trials in which in the end it is not even important how the whole thing turned out, but actually only the path to get there is important. Extreme cases like that of the comedian Luke Mockridge or the band Rammstein have shown how quickly a dynamic can arise in which personal perception, misguided assessments and hasty conclusions lead to an exponential interest that suddenly clicks for the beneficiaries of this development and subscriber numbers. By fueling further reports and maintaining campaigns, interest is maintained and leads to weeks of reporting on things that essentially cannot be clarified. In the end, the verdict of guilt and innocence is left to the courts and not to the witnesses.
The fact that the press plays a very inglorious role in this case and contributes to the fact that our ability to judge becomes more and more dependent on the evidence that we obtain from the sources of lobbyists and interest groups is a fatal development, the extent of which we cannot foresee at the moment. In any case, in the long term it leads to opinions losing value as long as they are artificially generated and attitudes hardly gaining in consistency if they are constantly reproduced in the community of people who think like themselves.
One of the essence of capitalism is the temptation of the individual to consume. The individual should think that he is special. And so you entice him to get what adorns his specialness. Half-knowledge has become a tolerable accessory, and belief in outrageous claims has become a monstrance that one carries in front of oneself to show that one is following the right idols. The knowledge that one possesses in order to have a well-founded belief is now only a chain of superficial perception.
In the end, the one who wants to make us believe without us knowing enough wants to seduce us into doing what he asks of us. We should read his newspaper or buy his magazines. We are supposed to accept a temporary truth. And as long as our interest and curiosity is satisfied, we don't care whether what we read there is true or false. We surrender to the lie because it satisfies our urges and saturates our attention. But in reality we are also capitulating to the opacity of an industry that is concerned with nothing other than our judgment, which in this way generates purchasing power.
03/18/24
©Serdar Somuncu
Current program "Soul Heil" can now be downloaded in the shop
*Serdar Somuncu is an actor and director
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