So, I have a question for the TV/newspapers watchers/readers

[ArnoldRimmer]

Hey, that's a very interesting topic that I've been thinking about myself a lot in recent weeks.

Over here in Germany, there is currently something very unusual going on:

Most popular news media over here have a "readers comments" section below the articles on their webpages. Since the Ukraine crisis, there are extremely many comments complaining about the bad quality of the reports on the Ukraine crisis in german media. Many think that the media do a very bad job, that the articles are extremely biased, anti-russian propaganda, that the german media tend to completely ignore certain topics that do not fit within a certain agenda.

And now there's a certrain trend that people use the comments section to inform other readers about "the other half of the truth". They post links to foreign media articles, point out background information about certain journalists, institutions etc. Many people state that they currently feel much better informed by the comments sections than by the actual articles.

It's a very interesting phenomenon, I've never seen anything even remotely similar in 35 years. During the first few weeks, most media simply ignored these reader reactions. But it became too big to ignore, and meanwhile dozens of articles have already appeared discussing the phenomenon. It is said that behind the scenes some people are very alarmed by this trend, as they consider it a serious threat to the "Deutungshoheit" (I wonder if there is a proper translation for this word?) of certain leading media.

Then again, people who thought that our national media are trustworthy were always naive. Germany's by far most influential and popular newspaper (BILD) for example is pretty open about being biased. They've published their code of conduct online, and one might expect a newspapers code of conduct to include things "fair, unbiased reporting", "being objective" or whatever. But you won't find a single word about such principles there - instead, the 5 rules they have exclusively address targets like "unconditional support for Israel" "strengthening the transatlantic relationship" etc. They don't even claim to be unbiased, and there are reports about journalists who start working for the newspaper need to sign a letter that they can be fired for writing articles that criticize the US.

I guess in earlier times people were already unsatisfied by media reports, but since people couldn't comment on articles written on paper and reading several foreign media was expenseive, it was never as obvious to the public.