[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Penguin

This is only anectodical evidence, (...)

Still looking for a poll which confirms that 3/4 of the German journalists are confessing Greens. Btw: In the Cicero piece Bok claims it be 1/3, though also without quoting a source.

Anecdotical or not, it finds representation in the quality I see throughout the media. The low quality is obvious and surpasses the well-researched and -written stuff by far, also, and that is even bigger a concern for me, it is the abusive, suggestive language being used, the phrasing that prevents fact-repeating and already educates people to have a certain wanted opinion. The politically correct way of talking.

The number stuff, three quarters of journalists sympathising with the Greens and the Left, I do not find and and do not recall the original article, it was from late last week. But when you take the 1/3 Green claim from Cicero Magazin, and then assume - just assume - another third or maybe even 5 or 10% more going for SPD and maybe also Die Linke - then you have the magical mark of 70-80% sympathising for the political left. It also shows in the main media's political bias as expressed in language and content of articles: by overwhelming majority the dominant main media call for a strong state, want more and more regulation, more and more EU, and express in general an opinion and attitude that simply is this: left, and often rightout socialist. The Frankfurter Rundschau just today had an editorial on that shrinking freedom and strong centralism and stronger state regulation are accepted by the hige majority of the population. Well. Die dümmsten Kälber wählen sich ihre Metzger selber.

Just a short remark regarding the public tv stations, as this is a whole new topic which extend the bounds of this discussion tremendously :
The influence of political parties, but also NGOs like churches or unions was intended. These organizations have been seen to represent the public opinion at the time when the broadcast treaty (Runfunkstaatsvertrag) was passed. The intention was not to make but to prevent a government-run media.

Counter-logical an idea, then. That is like saying lobbying by business lobbyists is done to strengthen democracy and the electorate'S vote. Also, I do not judge it by its intention (if it really where like you said), I judge it by its actual effect. Censoring and influencing has become worse and worse, may it be subtle in educating the rules and new terminology of political correctness, may it be direct intervention of party and government representatives in the program director'S offices (if you have watched German tV news over the couple of months, you must have noted that there have been a number of instances reported recently). Very popular: suggestive phrasing, and the invalid linking of two events, to push a wanted opinion by founding a statement with evidence that actually refers to something very different. This is what I mean by journalistic incompetence, amongst others. For example the Fukushima reactor accident now has killed several thousand people, because the way in which "journalists" wrote their pamphletes some months ago linked the killings not to the tsunami, but made it appear as if they died due to the reactor incident. That is like saying that building the Autobahn in the 30s last century has costed 60 million lives, as critics sarcastically commented. Why was it done? So many other examples that illustrate even an extreme amount of intellectual underhandedness of the writers, or a saddening lack of writing skill, mastery of the German language and lack of journalistic toolsets. The majority of the mass media do not inform, but do misinform us, and to think that the state could fairly and competently regulate it for more objectivity and quality, I find naive. To me the state is the most incompetent authority of managing all the tasks people demand him to do. Not to mention the desastrous financial argument speaking against it.

From my experience of 2 years working for a weekly political talkshow on public tv, I can tell you that I have not witnessed any censorship - mind you, I worked on a tech not a journalistic postion. The opinions from greens, islamists, communists - even those from conservatives were broadcasted as recorded. Though I have seen my amount of sloppy or outright terrible research.

See my reply above.

I agree, but this streamlining out of fear to step on someone's toes is sadly something we don't only see in reporting but also in politics as a whole.

Absolutely. But it also is done for ideological reasons. Genderism, feminism, EU, Islam being high on the to-do-list. Some of these themes are ideological drives coming from themselves, others are poushed in logical self-dynamic of the state trying to grab more and more control and power, the things and goals that libertarianism is criticising so heavily. We are on the way to the one-world-government. But it will be an oligarchic, unfree tyranny. Free trade zones and the EU centralization are just intermediate steps on the path to the ultimate goal.

I haven't written that, I said that "objective photojournalism is a lie"
Thankfully you write the arguments in your next passage:

I just wanted to cut the summary short. No hairsplitting needed.

In addition the choice of the point and the field of view, the angle, even selecting shutter speed or the exposore time is already where a manipulation, intentionally or not, already starts.

I called it the necessary reduction of reality in my earlier reply. It cannot be avoided, yes. Still, the intention to give it a twist, and the inevitableness of reducing the reality while doing your shot with this and no other exposure time, objective, and shutter setting, are two different things. The intention to do a technically good shot, and the intention to manipulate the viewer, are not the same.

Süddeutsche -> radical left
So you are saying that the second biggest national paper in Germany wants to overthrow the state? A paper where even Goldman Sachs indirectly has shares and where other papers from the same owner took much crap for supporting the idiotic Stuttgart 21 project - something all the Green's are furios about? C'mon!

I call the SZ one of the worst and manipulative papers we have, and yes, it is extremely far left-leaning. When I studied, us students agreed on that no matter the branches we were studying in. I wonder why Jakob Augstein is still with the Spiegel instead of the SZ, the SZ would be much more his natural home.

Same with Die Welt-> slightly left?

centrist to slightly left, yes. Some articles are pretty conservative sometimes, but more articles are obedient to the PC standards and are slightly left-leaning.

As Tribesmen in his charming way already pointed out: both Bild and Welt are owned by the same company, it's not uncommon for Springer journalists to switch between them. Die Welt has exactly one left writer: Broder.

I ignore Tribesman, so don'T try to argue with me over somebody of whom I take no note and do not know what he has produced this time. But Broder - left? He is a vbit like Pat Condell, and has his favourite issues: giving his attackers a bloody nose, Israel, Jewish issues, German and their collectively deranged mindset as a late consequnce of the second world war. I agree with broder on 3 out of 4 issues. On the one I do not, I usually would like to kick him into lunar orbit. But I respect him nevertheless, he is mostly right, and I like him for the way in which he does his things: mit Schmackes. Fearful softmumblers, split tongues and socially concerned careful whisper-voices we have enough. Especially in Germany.

And the only thing that was communistic about the taz is that until some 25 years ago, all employees got the same salary. The taz is just like the Greens a direct offspring of the '68 generation.

Again, I judge it by what it reaches in effects. The social model is propagates and where we would end if we would go according to TAZ's wisdoms, is a communist soceity, not more, not less. And that is the polite version of my view of it. There is a rude version in my mental pool of opinions, too, and that would not sound that nice and polite anymore if I would express it.

I agree with your assessment of Die Zeit - just pointing out that it is the still best weekly paper we have in Germany - next to the Jungle World - the best left paper, which sadly nobody reads...

It's a mixed bag, but all in all I hold a pragmatic attitude towards it that bases on live and let live.

Though I don't mind reading different opinions, there's too much fear of Feminazis and too much Austrian economics cult for my taste to use them as daily new sources

Some of them are theme-specialised platforms, so you should not be surprised. What else do you expect to read on a website on feminism and genderism, than feminism and genderism? Chess strategies? Unfortunately, the genderism issue is something of great concern and it does great damage and nobody cares and nobody wants to deal with it. I get mucz feedback on it becaseu I happen to have many teachers in my and my family's social network.The ideologistas behind it have hijacked major parts of the opinion-forming medias, the public education system and political stages pretty much like the so-called 68er once did with the justice system and education system. - Thesde are not the only blogs and sites I visit, but I did not systematically search for all links in my folder, and just listed those I probably click more often than the others.

LATE EDIT:

This opinion piece from FOCUS inlcudes some hints that are illustrating what I mean when complaining about the Deutungshoheit of the Greens and the Green having become at least as left as the socialists:

http://www.focus.de/politik/deutschl...id_985772.html

Apparently I am not the only one seeing things the way I do. I see this creeping degeneration and rotting of our culture in too bright intensity and its symptoms becoming manifest in too many place, doing too much mind damage and economic damage, as if i could ignore it or just smile about it anymore. To be precise, it makes me wanting to vomit. We destroy our own freedom from within, needlessly, we kill our our worthiness, our survivability and ability to defend ourselves against those wanting to destroy us from outside. All in the name of a hopelessly naive Infantilisierung of ourselves and the way we see things and world issues, and also at the price of a suicidal mutual dependency of politics claiming to give people more nanny-service and relief from their privater responsibilities, and the Pöbel demanding more of everything and allowing more and more penetration of the political Gutmenschen and their ideological hobbies into our private sphere, our mind, our thinking - and like religion they try to infest already the youngest of our children with their sh!t. It has been argued by some that this Gutmenschentum indeed is a surrogate religion, and I agree. Even the same missonary fervor if not fanatism is there. You have to follow their lifestyle rules, else...