{"id":121694,"date":"2014-05-30T16:37:17","date_gmt":"2014-05-30T16:37:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=121694"},"modified":"2014-05-30T16:37:17","modified_gmt":"2014-05-30T16:37:17","slug":"journalists-germany-attempt-censor-tv-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/journalists-germany-attempt-censor-tv-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Journalists in Germany attempt to censor TV program"},"content":{"rendered":"

Peter Schwarz<\/em><\/p>\n

Since February, Germany\u2019s second public television channel, the ZDF, has been broadcasting the political satire show \u201cDie Anstalt\u201d (the German word is used for a TV station as well as for a mental asylum) at regular intervals. Featuring 46-year-old Max Uthoff and 36-year-old Claus von Wagner, a younger generation of comedians has taken over from Urban Priol and Frank-Markus Barwasser, who headed the predecessor \u201cNews from the Anstalt\u201d.<\/p>\n

The first three editions of \u201cDie Anstalt\u201d were a refreshing antidote to the political coverage provided by the ZDF and other German media outlets. Using satire, the programs took up current issues and brought the public\u2019s attention to themes which normally can only be learned about by carefully researching the Internet or reading the\u00a0World Socialist Web Site<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Central themes of the programs were the revival of German militarism and the events in Ukraine. German President Gauck, Foreign Minister Steinmeier and Defense Minister von der Leyen, who all called for \u201can end to military restraint,\u201d were subjected to the same merciless treatment as the lying reports in the German media about the events in Kiev.<\/p>\n

The second edition of the program, on March 11, began with a depiction of the \u201cRevolution\u201d in Kiev\u2019s central Maidan square. It was not presented as a \u201cfreedom struggle\u201d, but rather as a revolt by forces which were mainly right-wing and on the payroll of vested interests. The fascist Right Sector was ruthlessly exposed, as was the corrupt oligarch Julia Timoshenko, played by comedian Jochen Busse.<\/p>\n

The third edition on April 29 then addressed at length the propaganda pumped out by the German media aimed at provoking war with Russia.<\/p>\n

One scene featured a chart with the names of five leading German journalists: Stefan Kornelius of the\u00a0S\u00c3\u00bcddeutsche Zeitung<\/em>, Josef Joffe and Jochen Bittner from\u00a0Die Zeit,<\/em>\u00a0and G\u00c3\u00bcnther Nonnenmacher and Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger of the\u00a0Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In addition, the chart showed the names of 12 transatlantic think tanks\u2013including the Aspen Institute, the Trilateral Commission, the German Council on Foreign Relations and the German Academy for Security Policy\u2013where \u201cmilitary heads, business leaders and politicians discuss foreign policy strategies in a discreet atmosphere,\u201d as Wagner explained.<\/p>\n

Lines on the chart traced the connections between the five journalists and the government-related think tanks. The result was a dense network. \u201cThen all of these newspapers function as something like the local editions of the NATO press office,\u201d Uthoff concluded.<\/p>\n

The scene was based on material contained in the dissertation \u201cThe power over opinion. The influence of elites on key media and alpha journalists\u201d by the media expert Uwe Kr\u00c3\u00bcger, and on a strategy paper by the Institute for Science and Policy (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, SWP) on German foreign policy, which has also been\u00a0commented on<\/a>\u00a0by the WSWS. Both papers had appeared in 2013 but were only known to a small circle. \u201cDie Anstalt\u201d has now made them available to a much broader audience.<\/p>\n

The wide publicity sparked fierce protests against the media outlets that had been exposed. Uwe Kr\u00c3\u00bcger told the online magazine\u00a0Telepolis<\/em>: \u201cI suppose that the pressure following a television show with millions of viewers is considerable. There has certainly been a shit storm of online articles, and apparently there were cancellations of subscriptions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The affected journalists reacted. They pressured the ZDF to ban similar revelations in the future. They responded to the exposure of their one-sided reporting and their incestuous relationship with the ruling elite by calling for censorship.<\/p>\n

Josef Joffe wrote a letter of complaint to the editor of the ZDF, Peter Frey. Joffe evidently anticipated a favorable reaction because Frey is one of the \u201calpha journalists\u201d exposed by Uwe Kr\u00c3\u00bcger. Together with Stefan Kornelius and Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger, Frey sits \u201con the Advisory Board of the Federal Academy for Security Policy, a think tank affiliated to the Federal Ministry of Defense,\u201d Kr\u00c3\u00bcger writes.<\/p>\n

Joffe justified his letter of complaint by arguing that the TV program had led \u201cto many protest letters and cancellations of subscriptions\u201d. He wrote that the treatment of the media in \u201cDie Anstalt\u201d\u2013which is, of course, a satirical show!\u2013was \u201cnot good journalism\u201d and Kr\u00c3\u00bcger\u2019s book was \u201cnot good science.\u201d Joffe does not deny his close links to the institutions mentioned, but he does deny that they constitute \u201clobbies\u201d. It is quite right and natural that many transatlantic organizations demanded \u201cmore armament\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

In an interview with the online magazine\u00a0Telepolis<\/em>\u00a0Kr\u00c3\u00bcger rejected Joffe\u2019s complaint. He refuted Joffe\u2019s assertion that the media and think tanks represented different points of view. His detailed analysis of the content revealed a broad degree of agreement by different newspapers regarding the following \u201cmajor questions\u201d: \u201cthat security should be defined in a broad sense, that German interests are to defended all over the world, that Germany should become more involved militarily and should maintain its partnership with the US, and that the German government should intensify its efforts to convince the German population on all of these issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stefan Kornelius defended his close ties to government-related think tanks in the NDR magazine\u00a0Zapp<\/em>. \u201cThis is my daily bread. I find it strange that I have to justify myself for this\u201d, he said. The message of \u201cDie Anstalt\u201d affected all the newspapers, from\u00a0Die Zeit<\/em>\u00a0to the\u00a0FAZ<\/em>\u00a0and the\u00a0taz<\/em>. It posed the question: \u201cDo we retain any legitimacy at all?\u201d He did not want to destroy the forums where he worked as a journalist, Kornelius said.<\/p>\n

Joffe\u2019s letter of complaint to the editor of ZDF was evidently intended to put the authors of \u201cDie Anstalt\u201d under pressure\u2013in other words to censor the program. To make this absolutely clear, Joffe also sent a \u201ccease and desist\u201d demand to the ZDF, as did Jochen Bittner.<\/p>\n

If the ZDF agrees to such terms it commits itself not to repeat certain claims and to pay a heavy penalty in the event of a violation. Should it not agree to the terms the TV station could face legal action with resultant high legal costs and penalties.<\/p>\n

A spokeswoman for the station told\u00a0Telepolis<\/em>\u00a0that the ZDF rejected the cease and desist letter. No information was given to the public about other reactions inside the ZDF. The fourth episode of \u201cDie Anstalt\u201d, however, which was aired on May 27, does not bode well. It was disappointing, with little remaining of its former political freshness and aggressiveness. Uthoff and von Wagner concentrated their fire on the impending football World Cup, the FIFA and its corrupt boss Sepp Blatter\u2013an easy target that does not tread on the toes of the German ruling establishment.<\/p>\n

Republished with permission of WSWS<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peter Schwarz Since February, Germany\u2019s second public television channel, the ZDF, has been broadcasting the political satire show \u201cDie Anstalt\u201d (the German word is used for a TV station as well as for a mental asylum) at regular intervals. Featuring 46-year-old Max Uthoff and 36-year-old Claus von Wagner, a younger generation of comedians has taken […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-121694","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121694\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}