Tatort ARD: How bad is television?
Photo: ARD
Television, which fewer and fewer people want to watch, continues to demand attention. Things should finally get better, demand a few “employees from ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio”. You have a “Manifesto for a new public broadcaster in Germany” written that has been in the media for a week. Everyone knows that the desire for the program to get better is something we all know from frantically flicking through the programs – whether it’s 10 or 100, the result is the same. At least almost, this is about public broadcasting, where there is a constant rumor that its programs are somehow better than those of the so-called private broadcasters. Above all, a journalistic bureaucracy in the broadcasting companies believes in this, which cannot be shaken by periodic scandals about wasting money.
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Has television perhaps become worse? The signatories of the “manifesto” include traditional leftists such as the songwriter Wenzel or the former politician and TV journalist Luc Jochimsen alongside cross-over right-wingers such as the politics professor Ulrike Guérot, the cabaret artist Lisa Fitz and the ex-ARD presenter Jürgen Fliege , but also the popular actor Henry Hübchen all say: Yes. Because the working conditions of journalists have become constantly worse. They would have to work more and more and get less money. Flexibility and such. Normal capitalism is familiar from all industries. This is disgusting and must be combated, no question about it. An effective remedy would be to abolish the quota fetishism for the programs, say the “manifesto” people, and they are right.
But they have a much bigger problem: the content. Strangely enough, they aren’t that flexible. There are limits, sanctions and one-sidedness. That’s what happens in the superstructure, one would judge on the traditional left – but that’s not what the “manifesto” people are concerned with. They sound the alarm in a very civil way: in their opinion, “opinion making and reporting are increasingly becoming blurred in a way that contradicts the principles of serious journalism.” And anyone who has a different opinion would be “either ignored, ridiculed or even excluded,” they write. Is this about the militarization of society, the need to become “war-ready,” as the federal government demands? Or about the criminalization of the poor and refugees?
No, not at all. If “attempts are made to defame and silence minorities with dissenting opinions,” then what is at stake here are the “‘fighting terms’ such as ‘lateral thinker’, ‘swearer’, ‘climate denier’, ‘Putin understander’, ‘pacifist’ < and other". Phew, the old Corona box is the problem again. The anti-Covid measures were the worst thing the German state has ever done to its population, all other unfreedoms and constraints pale in comparison - that has been the unifying delusion of the obscurants, pseudo-individualists and partisan posers who found it repulsive since 2020 and find that you want to protect other people. Plus a bit of climate skepticism and – hinted at – the apparently unshakable belief in Russia's love of peace.
The whole thing culminates in the assumption that the “fact checks” that are so popular on television are not actually that factual, but instead want to suggest “a supposedly absolute truth that rarely exists” and that “free social discourse is thereby painfully curtailed.” Was that ever the norm there?
With a naive textbook idealism, the “manifesto” people paint a picture of a fair television that has never existed before. The middle, still watching TV, is worried and staggers – to the right. This is absurd: while the right-wingers used to accuse television of being too left-wing (which it never was), today it is somehow too state-supporting for them and their allies. That’s why 33 television people allegedly only signed the “manifesto” in secret; their signatures were deposited with a lawyer, it is said. Too explosive and too dangerous for your career. That sounds a lot like the tabloid format “Brisant” on ARD.
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