The Lying Press?

No. But the biased press? In Germany, when it comes to Donald Trump?

Trump

I’d have to say yes to that one. After taking a look at this recent study done at Harvard, that is – Harvard, that infamous hotbed for right-wing extremism.

When it comes to reporting about Donald Trump’s fitness for office by Germany’s ARD (Channel One),  for example, 98 percent of this reporting is negative. Now that’s what I’d call objective journalism, folks. 98 percent of people in the real world can’t agree on anything, as we all well know, but things are different here in Germany (and in North Korea, too). The ARD, by the way, is one of the state-run “public” television channels that anyone who lives here is forced to subsidize, whether he or she watches it or not – whether you even own a television or not. Do any of you out there remember Der Schwarze Kanal? I didn’t think so.

98 percent? That only shows us that there is something 100 percent wrong with the ARD.

Only 3 percent of Trump’s U.S. coverage explicitly explored the issue of Trump’s fitness for office. European journalists were less restrained with the exception of BBC journalists, who are governed by impartiality rules that prohibit such reporting.[21] Journalists at ARD, Germany’s main public broadcasting outlet, are not governed by the same rules, and Trump’s suitability for the presidency was ARD’s leading topic in January, accounting for a full fifth (20 percent) of its Trump coverage. ARD stayed on the issue in its February coverage, when it consumed 18 percent of its Trump coverage. In March and April, Trump’s fitness for office got less attention from ARD, but it nonetheless accounted for about 10 percent of ARD’s coverage. Even that reduced amount exceeded the level of any of our seven U.S. outlets in any month. And ARD’s journalists were unequivocal in their judgment—98 percent of their evaluations of Trump’s fitness for office were negative, only 2 percent were positive.

Obama’s Red Line Finally Crossed

Yesterday: “Germany welcomes Trump criticism of Assad” (Washington Post).

Today: “Trump playing the world’s policeman after all” (Welt – N24).

Syria

There’s talk and then there’s action. Talk is always cheap. Action is always, well, bad.

“I didn’t set a red line. The world set a red line.”

Als Reaktion auf den mutmaßlichen Giftgasangriff des syrischen Regimes auf den Ort Chan Scheichun haben die USA erstmals seit Beginn des Syrien-Kriegs Luftangriffe gegen das Assad-Regime geflogen.   

German Trust In Media Rises Sharply After Being Told That German Trust in Media Rises Sharply

German told their trust in newspapers soars to record level.

Trust

After being told that a total of 55.7 percent of respondents to a study said they trust the print press, a total of 55.7 percent of respondents to the study said they trust the print press, a drastic rise on the 45.7 percent of respondents who gave that response in 2015, they were told, and the highest level of trust since the survey was first conducted in 2000, somebody told them, too. Or so I’ve been told.

Noch nie seit über 15 Jahren war das Vertrauen in die Presse so hoch wie heute. Den deutschen Medien ist es gelungen, das in sie gesetzte Vertrauen zu stärken und weiter auszubauen.

This War On Journalism Must Stop

Here in Germany, I mean. It is outrageous, unacceptable behavior and is damaging press freedom in Germany and abroad.

Monitor

Like I said, outrageous. So where’s the outrage, folks?

Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, the BND, apparently spied on large numbers of foreign journalists overseas over the course of several years, including employees of the BBC, Reuters and the New York Times. Critics see a massive violation of press freedoms.

The Polls Are Never Wrong

Right? As we were recently reminded after the Brexit vote and the United States presidential election, the pollsters, survey scientists and media manipulators who publish them are always right on the money.

Poll

So please keep this in mind (and please bring it back to mind in a few months time) when we now read that “the SPD has passed the union in another survey” (the union being Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU) and that this is due to the so-called “Schulz effect.”

This means, of course, that Germans are supposed to believe that the SPD’s candidate for chancellor, Martin Schulz, is wildly popular and on a roll and is single-handedly bringing German social democracy back from the near-death it is now experiencing to march together bravely into the brave new social democratic (socialist) future. They don’t believe it, of course, because he isn’t and he can’t. Germans, too, have also realized that polls have long since failed in their traditional function as poorly functioning forecast tools and are now failing miserably at their latest job: To deftly manipulate public opinion and steer it in the direction these pollsters & co. want it to go.

Nobody buys it anymore, Martin. Just like nobody buys you. You can bring out all the survey results you want but that won’t change a thing.*

Der Schulz-Effekt hält an: Die SPD hat auch laut einer Emnid-Umfrage die Union überflügelt. Die AfD fällt erstmals seit einem Jahr unter zehn Prozent.

*The real issue here is the true degree of Angela Merkel’s unpopularity, another closely guarded media secret.

Nero Was The Guy In The Matrix, Right?

More cool Spiegel stuff, folks.

Trump

Trump as Nero: Europe Must Defend Itself Against A Dangerous President.

It is literally painful to write this sentence, but the president of the United States is a pathological liar. The president of the U.S. is a racist (it also hurts to write this). He is attempting a coup from the top; he wants to establish an illiberal democracy, or worse; he wants to undermine the balance of power. He fired an acting attorney general who held a differing opinion from his own and accused her of “betrayal.” This is the vocabulary used by Nero, the emperor and destroyer of Rome. It is the way tyrants think.

I feel your pain, buddy. It literally hurts me to read this about how it literally hurts you to write this. Let’s both of us stop all this hurting, literally, and move on already. Please.

Shocking?

Trump

Not wirklich (really). OK, maybe a bit. But it’s certainly not anything new.

Spiegel

It’s one of this magazine’s major obsessions (US-Amerika and the bashing thereof), something that defines what it is and ensures its continued popularity. Popularity? No, it’s more like the party line. Somebody told me that every German household could once boast of having a copy of Mein Kampf, know what I’m saying? But don’t take any of this personally because, as their editor-in-chief says about this latest cover: “Der Spiegel does not want to provoke anybody.”

Now if that’s not the Lügenpresse (lying press) I’d like to know what is.

Who Am I? Where Am I? And Why Am I Reading This?

My fellow Americans: We have lost our identity. Again already, or something. Or at least that’s what I just read down here.

Amerika

But luckily for us, the folks over at Spiegel Online are going to give our identities back to us. Only this being Germany, and Germany being Germany, and what with Datenschutz (data protection) and all, we will have to properly identify ourselves first, of course (unless we’re Syrian refugees from North Africa, I mean, but we’re not, we’re Mericans). So… Wait a minute. How the hell is this supposed to work anyway?

Reporter Holger Stark spent the past four years as DER SPIEGEL’s Washington correspondent during a time in which the country changed radically enough to elect Donald Trump as its president. What led this once mighty nation into decline?

Megalomania & Small-Mindedness – How America Lost Its Identity

PS: Just read it, folks. They’re only trying to help us. This is NOT fake news, by the way, so don’t even THINK of looking for any alternative facts.

Leading German Fake News Provider Upset That News It Calls Real Now Being Called Fake By Others

Aghast (along with CNN) at allegations by President-elect Donald Trump that the fake news they and other major fake news purveyors regularly claim to be real is actually fake, German fake news provider Der Spiegel now claims that the President-elect’s allegations are “like totally fake already.”

Fake

“He can’t be serious, can he? Let’s get real here, people,” said one empörter (indignant) journalist in Hamburg. “He’s faking it. And I know a fake when I see one. That’s my job. And I mean that. For real.”

Fake News ist für manche die unbelastete Variante von “Lügenpresse” und ein bequemes Schlagwort für alles Neue, was einem nicht in den Kram passt. Auch in Deutschland findet das Nachahmer bei jenen, die die von ihnen sogenannten Mainstream-Medien ins Visier genommen haben.