What Country Is More Obsessed With Personal Data Privacy Than Germany?

I know of none.

Yet, oddly, officials at the German Foreign Office are apparently very upset that the Twitter accounts of journalists who openly disregarded Twitter’s personal data privacy guidelines (no doxing) were suspended. I’m sure this was some mistake and they’ll be coming out with an explanation for this puzzling contradiction soon.

Germany on Twitter suspensions: ‘We have a problem, @Twitter’ – The German Foreign Office tweeted screenshots on Friday of the accounts of journalists suspended by Twitter, warning the platform that the ministry had a problem with moves that jeapordised press freedom.

German Media Clearly Pissed Off By The Good News

This Putin guy really is a jerk.

Talk about being totally unreliable. The Russians did exactly what they said they were going to do. What’s he got up his sleeve this time?

Nord Stream 1 operator started gas deliveries after maintenance – German media reports.

Gas deliveries through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline have resumed on Thursday and gas was flowing again, Spiegel and daily FAZ reported, citing a report by German newswire dpa.

How Far Is Der Spiegel Willing To Go?

Will “Putin’s Apocalypse” be enough?

Or should they try “Russian racist ideology” and “Russian death camps” first? “World War III” is getting a little tiresome, don’t you think? I just don’t know. It must be tough being a balanced and objective journalist these days.

How Far Is the Russian President Willing To Go? – The West has expressed shock over Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. But the Kremlin boss has been speaking openly for years about his vision of a Russian empire. This is the escalation he has been seeking for 20 years.

German Of The Day: Gegenteil

That means the opposite.

German state TV in action: An Islamist fires a machine gun in Israel, killing one Israeli and injuring others. Israeli security forces kill the attacker.

What does German state news channel ZDF do? They broadcast: “Israel: Palestinian Shot.”

This is nothing new in “journalism,” of course, whether in Germany or anywhere else. But here you can’t “switch the dail.” Germans are taxed to support these state channels, whether they support them or not.

More Fair And Balanced Reporting

Where do these Croatians get off? A reporter would never break the law to get a good story.

Croatia police say German reporter helped migrants cross – Croatian police say that a German reporter was briefly detained and fined for illegally entering the country from Bosnia with a group of migrants.

Thousands of migrants remain stuck in Bosnia and other Balkan countries while looking for ways to reach Western Europe. Migrants in Bosnia seek ways to reach European Union neighboring country Croatia before moving on – to Germany, of course.

“On The Rise”

Just like racism, anti-Semitism, CO2, shark attacks and so much more, “social inequality” is on the rise in Germany.

Social inequality in Germany is on the rise – Germany’s poor are getting poorer, and the rich richer. A new government report has made clear how wide the country’s social divide is growing.

The odd thing about this is I can’t think of a time when social inequality and all the others weren’t on the rise. It’s all so very alarming. It sure is reassuring to know that this rise isn’t a classic journalistic device used to inflame and generate alarm to bring in higher ratings and increase advertising revenue for greater profit. Otherwise it would be hard to take headlines like these seriously.

Attack On Journalists Already Long Forgotten

No self-righteous outrage here. The attackers who did the attacking were the wrong kind of attackers to attack.

Attack

They were leftist extremists and not right-wing extremists – as one is expected to expect here. And that’s harmless or cute or something. Germans in general and German media in particular are “blind in the left eye,” as the saying goes. This isn’t supposed to happen. So it doesn’t.

Authorities confirmed on Saturday that they are investigating the political motives behind an attack on the camera team of popular German satirical news show the heute-show [Today Show].

While filming on May Day, several members of the crew were attacked while filming in Berlin. Four members of the team sustained injuries severe enough to be sent to hospital. Five men and one woman were arrested.

Illustrious? At Risk?

What Germany are these journalists writing about?

Merkel

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?

German Of The Day: Umerziehen

That means re-educate.

Umerziehen

And that’s what the “framing” expert at Germany state TV “Channel One” (ARD) has advised its employees to do. Viewers are in dire need of re-education.

Her secret “framing manual” indicates that the ARD is at war with its critics and private television channels alike, disruptive elements who refer to the ARD as “state TV,” criticize “compulsory fees” (they’re not compulsory, they’re a show of solidarity!) and “question the ARD’s relevance.” Gee, I guess she means me, too.

These disruptive elements don’t understand that the ARD is “guided by moral principles” and its own “moral necessity for social interaction” and not, like them, motivated by profit. The ARD doesn’t have to be motivated by profit, people. All Germans get taxed for this state supported media bias whether they’re viewers or not.

Isn’t that a nice smirk? Big Sister is watching. She wants you all to keep on watching, that is.

Die Arbeit der ARD, so heißt es, sei „von moralischen Prinzipien getragen“, überzeugt von der eigenen „moralischen Notwendigkeit für das gesellschaftliche Miteinander“ – während die „medienkapitalistischen Heuschrecken“ des Privat-TV nur dem Profit dienen würden.

If It’s Not In Der Spiegel, It Didn’t Happen

Unfortunately, that’s also the case even when it is in Der Spiegel.

Spiegel

And here y’all thought that fake news was fake.

Award-winning journalist Claas Relotius wrote fake news, German magazine Der Spiegel says.

An award-winning journalist who worked for Der Spiegel, one of Germany’s leading news outlets, has left the weekly magazine after evidence emerged that he committed journalistic fraud “on a grand scale” over a number of years, the publication said Wednesday…

Spiegel’s revelations echoed past instances of journalistic fraud by reporters elsewhere, including Jayson Blair of The New York Times, Christopher Newton of The Associated Press and Janet Cooke, whose 1980 piece about a child addicted to heroin won The Washington Post writer a Pulitzer Prize before it was exposed as untrue.

Er hat nach Meinung der Jury des Deutschen Reporterpreises 2018 wieder die beste Reportage des Jahres geschrieben, über einen syrischen Jungen diesmal, der im Glauben lebt, durch einen Kinderstreich den Bürgerkrieg im Land mit ausgelöst zu haben. Die Juroren würdigen einen Text “von beispielloser Leichtigkeit, Dichte und Relevanz, der nie offenlässt, auf welchen Quellen er basiert.”