 Peter Welchering, journalist, teacher for now living in southern Germany. He says himself here is soon landing in his pension, and now he's talking about the construction of the journalistic world. Yeah, maybe both are connected, because if I see how my job develops, I'm happy to be 62 and not just 32, and some developments I can just accept more easily. So, what's being constricted? What are the guardrails that have been changed? How can journalism escape the bubble? So, journalists can finally do their job properly again. So, obviously we need the help of the audience, readers, watchers, all of them, because journalism can only escape the bubble if you help. If you say properly what are your expectations to the journalistic products, if you help discuss using these channels with the journalists. So, next slide. I assume that media, especially the press and public broadcast, also private broadcast, can only do their job as gatekeepers and also enablers of participation, enablers of building a public opinion if they can work unhindered. And that is the job that we do. And there have been several discussions in the past. Some of them have been running for many years. I will just focus on newer ones. I won't go as far back as the oldest discussions, but the discussion affects us strongly right now. And I brought a study that is one month old now from the Technical University of Dortmund, the Institute for Journalism and Steinbrecher, who leads this institute. He found that the believability of journalism lost in the pandemic. Well, journalists were never really held in high opinion, but his results are shocking indeed. So, 41% of all Germans say the credibility worsened. So, they lost credibility. 43% say journalism worsened in the last years. More than a third say journalists are dependent on the powerful in politics and economy. And well, 28% say that journalism lost the contact to the people. And that is a bad, because we want to include and enable many people, especially minorities, and make their opinions heard. And 62% mean that journalism is exaggerating too much and scandalizing. During the pandemic, there were other studies as well that checked how did journalism develop. Very interesting was this done by Dennis Graf and Martin Henning. It was published two years ago in 2020 in March and they checked 51 programs or shows of the first public broadcast in Germany. 42 of the second one. And they found four tendencies. They said there's a lot of crisis rhetoric, very emotional. And they tended to agree with state management. They found that doctors and virologists were turned into heroes. And what the politicians decided, which was sometimes just ideologically founded and was not really a fact-based, not always, was consolidated. So parts of the study were retracted because apparently the pressure was very high. And that impressed me a lot. There was a strong discussion. So it's not that journalists slept during the pandemic and didn't critique anyone. As a journalist, we discussed a lot what we were doing. And some two years ago there was an essay from Daria Godewa who mentioned that this war rhetoric during the pandemic and also notion that this is a danger for democracy because the journalism didn't really fulfill their guardians and gatekeeper function because they were just helping politics. And Klaus Eurech, who isn't working anymore as well, he said journalism turned disastrous. And we have another study or an essay by Klaus Meyer and a colleague and they analyzed corona information and published and they said that the data in this pandemic just wasn't good. The data wasn't good. And they also indicated that many anecdotal stories were told and structural problems in the health management and that became much more obvious during the pandemic that worsened. They weren't told enough those problems. There was missing transparency. So what were the sources of the journalists? They reached their conclusions. The reports were very close to the political agenda and all the interconnectedness is not unproblematic. So in the summer of 2020, it was titled the time of neutrality is over. Journalists have to take sides again. And yeah, we had a lot of strong discussion and I'm not keeping it a secret that I am a strong proponent of the neutrality principle that journalists should stay neutral and be as objective as possible. I say as possible because truly being objective is impossible. But I have to quote my sources. I have to be objective with the sources and I can just select my sources due to convenience. And I have to put my own opinions aside and to just examine what the facts are and sometimes what I can find, even if it's not empirical fact. Then there was this study by Markus Maurer and others. Maurer and Reinemann, they work at a university in Mainz at another one in Munich. And when this study was shown to the public in Berlin, they had very differing approaches, which is not a bad thing. So if we check the data of this study, I have a few graphs. Then for example, one examination about the fulfillment of corona measures. It showed, well, this is the grey area here that the measures were acceptable and most showed that. So this is a meta study. It compares different examinations, I think. And yeah, so the measures increased and as the numbers fell, the cases fell, the measures were taken back. And a few of the studies found that the measures were going too far. And the colleague Markus Maurer, I can't show a video, but I'll mention the main points, said that this grey area could be interpreted such that they are just reporting close to the government, some other numbers. They examined journalistic publications and so they were examining, is it the consents of science or in politics or is it more ambivalence or distance and the yellow is mostly agreement. Especially when the pandemic was bad and then they were mostly reporting the consents and saying, yeah, there is a consents and that's where we are right now. And when the science was presented, then they wanted to see how is it shown. And they were saying also there is statistical uncertainties always in the knowledge. And does it focus on these or is it shown as yeah, that's pretty much fact. And in red here we see the articles where they talked about the uncertainties, also statistical uncertainties and yellow there's the essays or publications who read as if there were no uncertainties and that was quite an interesting result. So we can see that many journals probably didn't do their job properly, but rather they followed the mainstream and that's understandable. Many people were insecure and wanted security but it's problematic nonetheless. Interesting as well at the beginning of the pandemic Drosten was very prominent in the articles in fall of the first pandemic here. Karl Lauterbach was quoted far more. So Drosten is a virologist and in the second year Karl Lauterbach stayed more important who is a German politician. So Drosten who had a podcast in the MDR that stopped now the state rather low and Henrik Stree we can see it quite nicely here. He had development with a PR firm and another virologist. So he worked with the PR firm with Kai Diegmann who also said this first study was a mistake properly but that also afflicted the reporting. So doctors and medical institutions as scientific actors they are quite strong and were quoted a lot and other scientists they were cited far less. It's increasing now for example the question what happens with the kids, with the children but within the two years they were not represented quite well. So the two main authors evaluate this differently. So Alexandra Bochard also wrote an essay here or a column that made me suspicious because she says that this study found that the study is talking well of journalism during pandemic but if you look at the raw data I say this could be discussed at least. It's not that simple. But this interpretation was many people came to this conclusion. So let's see as during the corona pandemic even more close, more obviously than before and we can see that at the Ukraine war right now as well but already 2014 and 2015 many of these issues were shown with a lot of sources. So there's this book that also explains it quite nicely from a communication science perspective but let's stay in the now, in the younger history. So what are the dangers? We have no critical publishing and instead we have people who just say what the government wants and many of them are maybe not that bad but they want to remain in the mainstream and it's not weird. There was a lot of social sciences in this because journalists recruit from the middle layer of society maybe a bit higher than that but it's an area so the middle class basically and so they're recruiting people who belong to the mainstream and want to belong to the mainstream and it was and also the middle class is very closely aligned with the state and obeying the state and also they want to be rewarded for that by climbing the social ladder as it were. And of course also small issues and small mistakes in the pandemic they were totally as exaggerated but not put into context but other points they took forever until they were probably worked through masks affairs it took forever to be properly worked on but we reported quite quickly on how in the beginning certain vaccinations were not as viable confirmed by first studies. So during the pandemic we lost a lot of credibility in general first it looked like people would believe journalists more but then there was this study of the institute for journalism as it shows the bigger interest of the people for information because they wanted orientation and information it was confused for credibility so all in all in several areas we lost credibility not just in pandemic critics of the pandemic but also very much in the area and that can be proven empirically in the area of the civic middle class because they wanted information and guidance but fact-based guidance and that's not what they got and it was also often a question what are the values that journalism uses and follows and objectivity, democracy that was often confused with ethos or patriotism party politics basically so the gatekeeper function wasn't really kept up in the last two years we thought that we have to overcome this crisis first before we can handle these wrong developments but people also didn't want taking care of journalism but they wanted to be informed using facts but yeah, also many fled into talk shows and that was criticized and that journalists didn't reflect according to their professional ethos anymore and it was found that many journalists during the crisis were only wanted to see their own focus very small focus that wasn't asked for anymore and that also devalued the job, the profession and not only in the crisis but it made it more obvious that overdone storytelling to capture the attention of the readers just didn't work properly and there was the cause of reluxia that happened in 2018 and was discussed then in 2018 and made us look at journalism more critically and again before the pandemic there was this trend but it continued during the pandemic that journalists were presenting themselves more and more and not the story not the data, not the study that they wanted to present and that was critiqued as well then there was a heavy discussion how do we want to report on Covid? and well, if the media if the media is one-sided or unilateral well, of course, data is one-sided but that was a discussion we are fact-based we want to be fact-based we have insight theory but yeah, all the problems are multi-dimensional and as soon as we are connected to the constitution of world and journalistic worlds that's multi-dimensional because we are limited beings we have our limits we have a limited horizon and we can only take one step after another and if one-sidedness is proposed then people usually have a weird definition of truth because journalism and as in science we should always try to falsify because really certain information we don't have a lot of those and most of our knowledge that with all our limits we do have is limited as well so that's why it's very important that we have journalistic principles that we keep up and that we do not confuse them with a party line that we have to keep so we have to be followers of the truth first of all and there seems to be a sound issue in the meantime I oh yeah, so let's back then based on the facts that we find we have to be open to change our thesis so there was this idea in a report that we did on farming and the thesis was that someone wants to build a monopoly and yeah, it turned out that SAP, IBM and others wanted to do that up to Monsanto but that didn't work in Germany because we have a lot of small unions so we had to change our hypothesis and so we had a different one in the end than in the beginning but many people are critiquing that now if a research leads to a different result because they say well, we were expecting this how come you changed the story and you maybe know the nice thing I won't let facts destroy my nice story but yeah you must be ready to change your hypothesis if the facts just don't support it but it also means to reflect in my socialization in my professional constitution how does that change what I produce as a journalist so I have to be critical of myself I have to question myself it also means to protect minorities and minority opinions of course we entered the false balancing discussion quite quickly and that is important that false balancing must not be used as a censorship to see a minority as a minority that's totally fine but to suppress them that is what's not supposed to happen must not happen so yeah, we have to check check and check again with all the methods we have and right now with all the pictures that reach us from Ukraine that's especially source checking but of course having a second source and other methods we need to do that we need to be open we need to unprejudiced, unbiased and of course we have to always try to be ideal objective that's an ideal that we can never fully reach and we must also be conscious of that and we need to listen to the other side as well not just the second source but also the the opposite side and in the Weimar Republic there was this policeman who survived the national socialistic time and later worked for Adenauer even and he is called Dovifat and I have a few quotes of him so it's 1930 63 so patriotism and attitude so in the 1920s Dovifat said he was a man of the center and he furthered that attitude but then he switched to the national socialist and he dropped that in 1945 and in 49 he became one of the one of the advisors of Adenauer and in an essay in 63 he always said the journalist has to show their conviction in his journalism or in their journalism and then in 2020 there was this new journalistic center who said we teach in the tradition of Emil Dovifat and they also named their rooms and one was called Hanna after Hanna Arendt and one was called after Dovifat and that obviously led to discussions because the journalism of him to honor that with a room and put it next to Hanna Arendt is daring up to weird and after a longer discussion it led to make this room without a name but this problem with the conviction journalism those in power there in this journalism center didn't remove that here I have a reasoning of Frank Überall who is working he's part of a committee there and they say no we are not referencing him we are referencing the structure but yeah that's a problem when we talk about conviction journalism it's always a page a mandated journalism and what we have mostly learned from the British people about journalism since 1945 is that we have to distinguish ourselves from mandated journalism and yeah so and I think the main difference is that attitude and position or stances are self-critical at times but conviction does not conviction just means that you assume that you are right and just try to execute upon that conviction and if you confused it too that means that you want to have a goal that you want to achieve instead of just report objectively who confuses attitude and conviction who wants to decide on information and sometimes they want to deny reality that happened a lot when conflicts in Eastern Europe was ignored that is now coming back with a vengeance and who does that and who wants to argue or judge on a moral and ideologue basis and very often it is confused to comment on facts but and sometimes they just don't take the facts into account anymore at all and now about a week ago Patricia Schlesinger from Berlin Brandenburg Public Broadcast she talked in an interview with the paper Zeit well in this interview she said that conviction has no place in journalism that was a very interesting interview and two journalists from Zeit had this with two higher level German politicians and conviction and also posture and attitude was very important to ways of seeing things contrasted quite clearly and this discussion was very important for Adi the first German public broadcast that it's very important in public public broadcast in Germany to really differentiate here and there was this essay in 2020 as well that I wrote and I put my main points together in this essay there are many quotes and there is more of a historical discussion as well about the background and the distinction between conviction and attitude and now the last slide let's give it a bit time to do its work the issue that we have is that coming from a conviction journalism it turns into a daycare journalism or or rather a welfare or care journalism so we have to nudge people and teach them and this replaces the gatekeeper function so in digital journalism we are confronted with a selfie journalism we are not the structures so for example they are not talking about the structures behind Comex but how I as a journalist research these structures so that is then the main point so this selfie journalism is more entertaining of course because the structures are dry but that also leads to leads to the digital journalism that was lauded as very participative because people can participate and have their opinion heard as well so that's replaced and ideology becomes more important so affirmative journalism that's very focused on pushing the mainstream and the political the governmental opinion and yeah pushing that and originally people should be educated and being unable to form their own opinion but that's more and more replaced and it's put nicely in the sentence well don't confuse our listeners with new knowledge and there's still all sides present in public broadcast but we have to be careful that this constriction doesn't proceed and that we find our way out again that there are these constrictions in crisis times that's understandable but we have to reflect them critically what happened in these past two years and what do we have to do to work on these deficits that happened that are understandable that might have good reasons but we want to come back to a journalism that has the task of promoting knowledge and facts and we need listeners and so all in all the audience be it listeners or readers to push the professional makers of journalism so they can together exchange about the world view and say what did we plan our product as and how did we plan the journalism and we have to exchange our opinions so now I have to join the big loop up okay no I'll stay here for the moment thank you very much for this input we have a few questions that we have to hurry through so we don't destroy the timing the timetable would you still, how can journalism still be the fourth force in the state and control if nobody can pay for it we need something that is being paid for and that's public broadcast and that is well paid for there is a lot of money collected I think 8 billion and then more from ads another billion but we have to question certain things be it sports be it entertainment but we need to do proper research quality journalism but yeah in this context everyone accepts that it costs millions to see a sporting event and TV and I would think I would deduce that nobody fights back very few people focus on it but everyone thinks well what's my piece of the cake yes and that's fatal we can't focus on what do we get out of it but we have to see we have to plan a new digital strategy and public realm I don't know anyone with a proper digital strategy and I really hate that so much money is spent that is for productions that are then only shown on big providers but there is no platform no public platform and I also sometimes ask do we really need public this sport and the public broadcast or could we just save that do we really need talk shows that are quite expensive and are privately produced usually by the moderators instead of productions done by the broadcast is themselves as it was used to be 20 years ago so what about the quota pressure well journalism should not care about that if I only want to get a good quota of viewers then that makes it difficult for me I need to provide participation for minorities and that has to be more focused that has to get more focused we need to obligate ourselves to do that more again we lost it a bit the question in the end so not to bow to the rate a quota to the market share that means you have to stand up and stand up for yourself everyone has to move in the same direction and if we see each journalist as one muscle then it's not coordinated we need different characters in journalism we need different approaches and we also need different approaches in journalism but what we need is we need journalists attitude and stance posture that also means that differing opinions are not just ignored as we see more and more but that they are given space and we've seen that as well some minority positions they were abused just for market share just as wrong as saying I want market share by doing mainstream because it's easy just as wrong thank you very much again big round of applause for this talk thanks to all of those behind the scenes the signal angels camera man, the translation angels and everyone, thank you very much thanks Peter I want to take something up that's what those people did that's an alternative media scene that has to be more developed and that gives another chance to journalism