In many editorial offices, there has been a high degree of uniformity: the media mainstream lacks the courage to stand up to the spirit of the times. The Schlesinger affair is just one expression of what is currently going wrong in the media landscape.
What is disturbing about state-controlled television is not the things that are reported. What is disturbing are often the things that are not reported or only reported in passing. Sometimes it’s just the questions that remain unasked.
When chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz said during one of the candidate duels on “ARD” that Germany was not dependent on Russian gas, this false statement on the part of the journalists went unchallenged. Out of ignorance? Out of disinterest? Out of opportunism? One does not know.
I remember sitting on the jury for the Georg von Holtzbrinck Journalist Prize together with the then ZDF director Thomas Bellut and the publisher Dieter von Holtzbrinck when we – by consensus, by the way – didn’t award a TV report for the first time. The reason: The TV stations had not submitted a really competent business contribution. Economic competence on German television is conspicuously underdeveloped.
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The disturbing thing is that the employees of the public broadcasters have long accepted this criticism with a shrug. Many are no longer journalists in their main job, but activists or – even worse – job shifters and expense knights. The former “rbb” director Patricia Schlesinger – formerly a passionate journalist – did not invent the self-interest optimization of the TV officials, but only illuminated the state of depravity.
Former journalists have also developed in this direction in other stations. They use the public service mandate as a moral shield for optimizing privileges. The 8.5 billion government-guaranteed revenues may encourage such a business model.
The self-control by the television and administrative boards is clearly not working. And she doesn’t do it, if only because on the fringes of the meetings one tries to conclude deals on the basis of reciprocity: attention for convenience. This is the barter between the interest groups represented there and the TV officials who are to be supervised. Without the research of “Business Insider”, the courtly goings-on at “rbb” (and elsewhere?) would never have made it onto the agenda of a committee meeting.
A high degree of uniformity has come about in many editorial offices – and this criticism goes beyond public service broadcasting. A uniformity of career paths, of ideas, of thinking and finally of the lyrics.
In Russia politics, for example, criticism is still considered unpatriotic. The now undeniable fact that the sanctions regimes of the West are not only damaging the Russian economy, but also the German economy in particular, is not really discussed. Why not? The good journalist is not the fifth column of NATO.
The money paid out here is again about money that would have to be collected from children we do not give birth to. Anyone who is in a generous mood and calls out “You will never walk alone” to the voters does not want to trigger any ambition or demand any physical exertion. The social calm of the present is bought with the economic descent of the future. This is the turning point that no one is talking about.
Now, as a returnee from the summer resort, you don’t want to wantonly disturb the rest of the others and don’t want to alarm your dear colleagues unnecessarily. But this almost obscenely displayed indifference to economic issues – which was already noticeable when billions of investor funds from “Wirecard AG” were deflagrated under state supervision – is not a trivial offence. Not for a critical journalist.
This is how the swaggerer has his grand entrance. This modern thin-board drill doesn’t know how to read a balance sheet. But he knows how to stoke the fire of indignation. He cannot distinguish proceeds from yield, but he is a proven expert at resentment and slander. This is another reason why many have switched from journalism to activism. In the fight for a good cause – so it is hoped – it is not immediately apparent that one does not understand much about the cause itself.
An Easter miracle of its own kind took place in many German editorial offices: thousands of editors went to bed as sociologists, psychologists and literary scholars to celebrate their resurrection as virologists and climatologists. What Kurt Tucholsky once said applies to them: “There is nothing that people are so proud of as what they have known for two minutes.”
Our Pioneer project takes a fundamentally different approach. We want to replace the complacent nod of the journalists with well-founded doubt and amazement at the plurality of human beings. We want to turn the activist back into the journalist. We want to help the economic view to do justice again.
Basically, it’s not about reinvention, it’s about bringing it back. It’s about the courage to stand up to the spirit of your own time. And for the freedom to defy the government politician on an evidence-based basis.
The politician has the office and the power. And we have our doubts, our curiosity and our knowledge. We Pioneers are trying to establish a school of thought that once again enjoys research and intelligent counter-speech. Who cultivates doubt, who neither fights nor patronizes the opinion of the other, but who encourages this other opinion and finds it an inspiration.
The media mainstream – which has long been experienced as “group thinking” and thus as a threat in the Chancellery – betrays the basic values of freedom of expression. He only listens to himself. He doesn’t want to know anything, he wants to teach.
We want what is common practice in everyday medicine, obtaining a second opinion or asking the second expert in court, that this normality becomes ours again.
“The Pioneer” is a project that relies on strict political independence – no politicians on the supervisory boards, no fees sanctioned by politicians, no other subsidies. We combine this political independence with freedom from the advertising industry. We don’t sell our audience to car companies, banks and consumer goods companies with the intention of stimulating consumption by our Pioneers.
We do not dissect our readers, listeners and visitors according to age, gender, religion and purchasing power in order to then offer this data to the major media agencies for their profile building and retargeting. We don’t want to disrupt the flow of reading and listening pleasure with commercial breaks.
Our project “The Pioneer”, which developed out of the “Morning Briefing”, wants to change the conditions described. We don’t fight the others. But we complement them.
Gabor Steingart is one of the best-known journalists in the country. He publishes the newsletter The Pioneer Briefing. The podcast of the same name is Germany’s leading daily podcast for politics and business. Since May 2020, Steingart has been working with his editorial staff on the ship “The Pioneer One”. Before founding Media Pioneer, Steingart was, among other things, Chairman of the Management Board of the Handelsblatt Media Group. You can subscribe to his free newsletter here.
