About refugees? But Angela Merkel, the parties in power, state television and all the other media outlets forced into line politically have assured and reassured you time and time again that the refugee crisis is completely under control, Germany.
Why is it still the top issue that worries you?
Germans most worried about refugees, climate change – Climate change has made the biggest jump towards the top of a monthly survey of German sentiment. Despite a 16 percentage point drop, asylum policy remained the chief concern for most Germans, according to the poll.
Asylum policy and climate change are the top concerns for Germans, according to the DeutschlandTrend poll published on Thursday. Nearly a third of all respondents said immigration was the most pressing issue for Germany.
Why won’t the Germans simply believe what they’re supposed to believe? Like they didn’t before under two other German regimes?
Because it reveals the Media Brain Police for who they are.
Granted, this guy was a real artist but can you imagine the armies of lesser charlatans out there who furnish us with our news each and every day? No media bias or fake news here, right?
The furore surrounding Der Spiegel journalist Claas Relotius is back, with a book by the colleague who exposed him –
Fiction and non-fiction can feed off each other in unusual ways. In the winter of 2018, Germany was shaken by the biggest media scandal since the forged Hitler diaries, after it emerged that the country’s bastion of investigative journalism – DER SPIEGEL – had published stories by a reporter who had “fictionalised” his prize-winning articles with armies of invented characters. Now the “Relotius scandal” has gone into its second round, with the publication of a non-fiction book by the journalist who exposed his fraudulent colleague: a detective story about the search for truth in the era of fake news that makes a more gripping read than most novelists could have managed…
Before he was exposed, he had won the top prize for German reporters, the Reporterpreis, four times in six years. One judge praised his stories as jumping off the page “almost like literature”. He was in line for a promotion at Der Spiegel.
Oh, Al Jazeera makes this stuff up. Then it makes sense.
Germany welcomed refugees. Now it’s reaping the economic benefits – German companies need more skilled workers. Refugees are helping to fill the gap.
This is not the German reality. When Angela Merkel opened the floodgates in 2015, talk was soon everywhere (where talk like this was expected to be – see state television) that precisely this would happen; highly skilled engineers, doctors and other specialists from Syria would “fill the gap” in a booming German economy short on workers. This simply did not happen. The small number of specialists who did make it here were generally stymied by German bureaucracy or simply do not have the skills German companies expected them to have. Who did come? Armies of unskilled workers who are now a big burden on the German social system.
It’s not the Syrians’ fault that Germany does everything bass ackwards here, though. The Germans needed skilled workers so they let the unskilled in. They don’t even bother to introduce a comprehensive immigration law so they can decide who enters their country or not – haven’t gotten around to it to this very day. And on and on it goes. Al Jazeera’s fantasy Germany makes for good stories, I guess, but it has nothing to do with the real Germany. Not that anybody is interested. Just sayin’.
Merkel’s illustrious reign is at risk of being tarnished. Huh?
That nobody really much cares about or follows what is going on in Germany is one thing but to start churning out science fiction about a parallel German universe is simply irresponsible.
There is nothing “illustrious” about Angela Merkel’s “reign” and there is absolutely, positively no risk that it could become tarnished. It already is tarnished. It can’t get more tarnished than it already is, in fact. Ask any German on the street and he/she will tell you. The journalists at CNBC ought to consider giving that a try.
Sakrileg, the German word for sacrilege: the violation or misuse of what is regarded as sacred. I’m about to go there. Has German Chancellor Angela Merkel been a disaster for Europe, and is her prolonged tenure at the Federal Chancellery extending the region’s problems rather than holding them back?
While President Donald Trump held his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Friday he brought up one of his favorite themes: “Fake news” and malicious journalists who are ought to get him.
There were some boos in the crowd following this. No big surprise here. But responsible journalists at Germany’s Staatsfunk channel ARD, concerned that these boos might not be as audible on their recording as they “ought” to be, tweaked the audio to make the boos louder.
The outrage in Germany hielt sich in Grenzen (was limited) when this came out, of course, but a few German journalists were nevertheless less than impressed with the ARD’s methods. “You’ve clearly overstepped the limits for a news broadcast,” wrote one journalist. “And it’s hard to imagine that you would have done the same should there have been applause.”
„Die @tagesschau hilft ein bisschen nach, damit Buh-Rufe gegen Trump lauter und deutlicher zu hören sind. Klare Grenzüberschreitung bei einer Nachrichtensendung, lieber @KaiGniffke. Und schwer vorstellbar, dass Sie dasselbe bei Applaus getan hätten“, schreibt Reichelt.
It’s not the Germany I live in. Germans don’t resist fake news, they roll around in it like pigs in the mud. Only they pretend their news is not fake. Their fake news doesn’t stink, in other words. And their fake news is different than our fake news, of course. Maybe that’s why they can pretend it isn’t fake: German fake news is generated by the government broadcasters and funded by taxation for which the viewers have no representation.
Here is a little example recently to give you an idea of what I mean. If 98 percent negative reporting about Donald Trump done by a state-run broadcasting monopoly isn’t fake news I don’t know what is. Germans would be skeptical about 98 percent negative reporting on Hitler. Nobody here bats an eye about this, however. What is there to resist, right?
More regulation of social media, less news consumption from alternative sources and no Fox News.
Because, well, that would be too unpleasant for the public being made to do the broadcaster’s forced funding to have to face.
Germany’s state-run television channel ARD recently decided not to air a documentary it had itself commissioned concerning the latest outbreak of antisemitism in Europe and the Middle East because the people doing the film apparently did this job much too well (after enough noise was made about this decision the ARD had to broadcast it anyway).
This could trouble viewers in a country where at least 40% of its citizens hold anti-Israel, antisemitic views. Or so the reasoning must be. ARD documentaries propagating negative views about Israel get aired here all the time, however. This having to do with balanced journalism or something. Or so the reasoning must be.
Anti-Zionism is not a legitimate political position, but rather a movement against the Jewish and democratic state. It is Antisemitism 2.0.
PS: Meanwhile… The latest boycott Israel campaign from BDS seems to be making great strides forward here in Berlin. It is unclear at this point whether the ARD will be commissioning a documentary about this campaign or not.
Observing Hermann 