Media criticism (communication studies)

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Media criticism describes the argumentation of a society with its mass media about its content, reception , working methods and organization, that is, all critical , argued considerations about media that are not part of a purely content or opinion-related discussion. Objects of criticism are violations of journalistic principles, the organizational conditions (e.g. lack of separation of advertising and editorial ), violations of human dignity and principles of morality , as well as the integration into structures under private law or the proximity to (e.g. public-law organization of broadcasters) or dependence on advertising revenue and state structures (e.g. the synchronization of the media during the Nazi era ). Media criticism can rightly be called systemically relevant, as it ensures the quality of the media.

history

The first statements that can be described as media criticism can already be found in the writings of Plato around 400 BC. With the appearance of the first newspapers at the end of the 16th century, the basis for the criticism of the media object was created: “The history of media criticism is as old as its object.” In the academic field, media and communication scholars deal critically with the media and their media Mode of action. However, critical observation also takes place outside of science. In 1977, for example, Günter Wallraff did undercover research at the Bildzeitung in order to uncover its manipulative and information-distorting practices. Media criticism is also an issue with cabaret artists and satirists.

The first major investigation into the objectivity of media coverage, the study A Test of the News from 1920, was devoted to the New York Times and its Russia News from 1917 to 1920. Walter Lippmann's content analysis came to the conclusion that the representations were grossly one-sided and were partial. The cause is the failure to meet journalistic standards, for example because the Times relied on "official suppliers" of information. It is even more misleading to rely on semi-official, anonymous statements instead of official communications. Journalists shouldn't have too close ties to politics. (see p. 41) In addition, not even a newspaper like the Times would meet the need for suitable correspondents. (see p. 42) In critical times, the separation of editorials and news breaks down. The editors' stance on Russia policy influenced the news profoundly and in blatant form. The textual design of the news in terms of accentuation and headlines is clearly determined by standards other than professional. This fact is so obvious, so conspicuous is the influence of the editors' bias, that "serious reform is needed before the code that has been violated can be restored". (see p. 42)

Important media critical work came from Noam Chomsky and Neil Postman in the USA . Ombudsmen were installed there in the 1960s to take up media criticism from society. Online magazines such as Salon.com and Slate.com acted as media-critical publications from 1995 and 1996 respectively. In France, media-critical collectives such as Action critique médias (1996) were founded in the 1990s , and the book Les nouveaus chiens de garde ( The New Watchdogs ) by Serge Halimi, the media-critical magazine Pour lire pas lu and media-critical documentaries by Pierre Carles were published .

In media journalism, such as in the Meedia magazine , the media take part in media criticism, although Noam Chomsky criticizes that self-criticism and self-control are insufficient.

Since the end of the 1990s with the advent of the Internet, the public has been increasingly criticizing the media on social media such as Facebook or Twitter or on video portals such as YouTube. Blogs are now also an important factor in forming critical opinions on media reporting. Watch blogs such as NachDenkSeiten and media watch blogs such as Bildblog or, in Austria, “ORF-Watch.at” see their task in criticism and the detection of false reports or manipulative reporting.

Another form of media criticism is the reader comments on news sites and online newspapers under each article. In many cases, however, these are moderated by editors or restricted or blocked on the grounds of “fending off trolls”. Since 2012, the Alternative Media Prize has awarded a contribution with a special prize in the media criticism category.

Media and Communication Studies

According to Dieter Baacke, the ability to criticize the media is one of the four aspects of media competence necessary in a media society . Also Bernd Schorb counts the critical reflexivity on media literacy, with the people evaluate the variety of information and entertainment.

"Agenda-setting" and "Agenda-cutting"

Events and topics are selected selectively. In “agenda setting”, the media can focus on certain topics by picking up and weighting them, as well as by making up and placing them. In “agenda-cutting”, on the other hand, an attempt is made to prevent, fade out or delay certain topics or to give them their own “spin”. An “instrumental update”, however, jeopardizes the normative goal of objective and impartial reporting. One-sided moralizing depictions of events, individuals or social groups can unjustifiably bring them into disrepute.

The American journalist and media critic Walter Lippmann coined the term gatekeeper for journalists who decide what is withheld from the public and what is passed on.

Staging, scandalizing, moralizing and personalizing

The media scientist Heinz Bonfadelli notes that journalism is staging more and more events as media events itself and is focusing “more and more on scandalization and moralization on the one hand and personalization, emotionalization and intimacy on the other”. In the reporting, the tendency towards infotainment is becoming more and more apparent, a turn to “soft topics” as well as increasing emotionalization and personalization of news.

Federal President Roman Herzog warned of a "flattening spiral" as early as 1996: "No nonsense, no perversion, no peculiar fad that would not populate extensively colorful pages and screens."

After studies, the communication scientist Hans Mathias Kepplinger criticizes the majority of journalists and media makers rejecting responsibility for the consequences of their work and the majority approving of exaggerations in the sense of a good cause.

Social origin of the actors

In his dissertation on the influence of the elites on German journalists and the media, Uwe Krüger analyzes how leading media more or less reflect the current discourse of the elites, but do not exceed its limits and do not critically question its premises. Krüger's thesis is “that a consensually united elite can rule against the interests of a large part of the population on important issues (war and peace, macroeconomic order) and that journalistic elites could be too deeply involved in the elite milieu to still act as advocates for the public To act in a critical-controlling manner. "

In addition, the involvement of journalists in an organization of the federal government must be viewed critically, namely Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger (FAZ), Stefan Kornelius (SZ) and Peter Frey (ZDF) as advisors of the Federal Academy for Security Policy , a think tank in the business area of ​​the Federal Ministry of Defense .

Regarding the question of what kind of influence the elites exert on journalists, Krüger suspects that “journalists with values ​​and opinions that are compatible with elites (have) a higher chance of gaining access to the highest circles, and their involvement in the elite milieu increases the conformity over time. This also means that journalists with opinions that are compatible with the elite have better chances of making a career, because they can score points in their own company and in the industry with exclusive information and high-ranking interview partners. ”Krüger argues with Pierre Bourdieu's concept of social capital .

Economic ties

One topic of media criticism is the economic dependence of many media on advertising orders and the associated ability to exert influence.

Transparency International criticizes company-financed journeys for journalists or collaborations between companies and editorial offices and publishers, which thereby violate editorial independence. The boundaries between journalism and public relations become blurred when editors take over ready-to-use text modules or broadcast radio reports from the supplies of the supposed partners in the PR industry or when prominent journalists act as "brand ambassadors" for corporations and appear as speakers or moderators of events for companies. Transparency International also calls for the abolition of journalist discounts, special conditions and price reductions for journalists on goods and services, because they could shape journalistic reporting as a possible form of taking advantage or bribery .

Many media are dependent on press funding and other government funds, for example through the placing of advertisements. Transparency International criticizes the fact that there is a relationship of dependency between the media and politics, in which mutual influence can quickly reach areas that are not problematic under criminal law, but also no longer ethically unobjectionable.

In Austria, tabloids and free newspapers such as Kronen Zeitung , Heute , Österreich or Kurier benefit in particular from advertisements from the government, ministries, political parties, state-owned companies as well as the City of Vienna and its city-owned companies. This leads to the fact that politicians keep making requests for good editorial behavior. This creates the impression that editorial opinion can be bought through advertisements. Journalistic independence is endangered both by external influence exerted by public relations on reporting, for example as courtesy journalism, and by mixing editorial and advertising parts (native advertising).

Media practitioners such as Ulrich Wickert are also critical of the economic interdependence of the media. The media's claim to be the fourth estate has always been wrong, and there is no democratic legitimation of the press. Instead, media are largely a part of the economy. “The media are shaped by economic interests. Publishers have to consider: How do I sell my paper? How much profit am I making? In my opinion that is a limitation of the Fourth Estate. "

Communicators and recipients

Criticism of the media comes from the ranks of journalists and media makers themselves as well as from the ranks of media users, which is scientifically treated in communicator research and user research.

Lack of neutrality

Objective and impartial reporting aims to neutralize various positions and arguments represented in society. In practice, however, many media providers are characterized by a “more or less pronounced editorial line” or “journalistic goals”.

The journalist Rudolf Mitlöhner believes that today's average social media user is offered no less diversity of opinion than the traditional newspaper reader, radio listener, television of the pre-digital era. Today, there is more (also ideological) pluralism in a Facebook timeline than in the respective daily newspaper. In addition, he criticizes the tendency of the media to “sanction mere (false) opinions” and a “quasi semi-official view, a mainstream of published opinion” [...] in which “arrogance, narrow-mindedness, aloofness, something of everything - des political media juste milieu ”show. The ORF, for example, reports "on its various platforms with a tendency to slip" and give the contributions "a certain amount of spin by moderating them in or out".

Hans Magnus Enzensberger criticizes that television is "primarily used as a well-defined method for enjoyable brainwashing."

Franz Kössler criticizes the fact that the representation of facts in the media often does not correspond to the public's perception of reality: "There is an ever-increasing gap between the concrete experience that citizens have and what one would like them to believe." the former ZDF director Dieter Stolte warned the media of an increasing loss of reality.

The journalist and media critic Walter Lippmann analyzed that there is a drifting apart of public opinion and published opinion when the selection rules of the journalists who have been brought into line largely coincide. This creates a consonance of reporting that acts like a confirmation to the audience (everyone says it, so it has to be right) and installs a stereotype-supported pseudo-environment in the audience's minds. The social psychologist Kurt Lewin also sees a problem in the fact that "the selection rules of journalists largely coincide". This "creates a consonance of reporting that has the effect of a confirmation to the audience."

Several studies have come to the result that journalists are politically much further left than the general population. In 2005, a representative survey of journalists from all media branches in Germany showed that Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen enjoyed the sympathy of a good third (35.5%) of journalists, followed by the SPD (26.0%). A fifth of journalists (19.6%) did not lend themselves to any party. The CDU / CSU (8.7%) and FDP (6.3%) also found less support among journalists than the average compared to the 2005 Bundestag election. In Austria, too, a survey of 500 representative selected journalists came to similar results. 34 percent of media people named the Greens as their closest party.

Declining trust in the media

A representative survey of 32,000 people across Europe, which professions they trust most, carried out in 2010 showed that only 27 percent of people trust the journalists' profession; they were only three places ahead of the politicians.

In 2013, a survey by Transparency International showed the extent of the population's critical attitude towards the media: 54 percent of those surveyed in Germany felt the media was corrupt .

Since 2014, the term lying press has been used in Germany in social media , the blogosphere and in political movements like Pegida as an expression of dissatisfaction with media reporting.

In the “Trusted Brands 2015” survey conducted by Reader's Digest magazine , only 26 percent of respondents in Germany said they had a lot or quite a lot of trust in journalists. 68 percent had little or no trust in this profession. Similar values ​​(28 percent / 66 percent) were determined for Austria and Switzerland.

In 2016, according to a Gallup study, the trust of the American population in the media, which has been falling continuously for years, fell to the lowest level that has ever been measured. Gallup sees the cause of the eroding trust in the media primarily in the increasingly opinion-driven journalism (opinion-driven writing). According to Rasmussen's reports, CNN was the least trustworthy cable news network for American voters in 2017.

See also

Web links

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Guidelines for journalistic independence at Axel Springer (accessed on June 21, 2016)
  2. ↑ Press Code of the German Press Council (accessed on June 21, 2016)
  3. ^ Benedikt Breitenbach: The journalistic principles - morality vs. Reality. GRIN Verlag, 2010, ISBN 978-3-640-55091-3 .
  4. ^ Anna Bloch: Diversity of Opinions Contra Medienmacht: Current Developments and Reform Efforts in Media Concentration Law. Logos Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-8325-3486-8 , p. 79.
  5. ↑ Federal Agency for Civic Education / bpb: What is media criticism and why is it important? December 22, 2016. Retrieved February 18, 2017 .
  6. ↑ Karsten Rohrback: Plato's media criticism: A differentiated look at the scriptural criticism of "Phaedrus". GRIN Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-638-93946-1 .
  7. ^ Wikipedia: Press history in Germany .
  8. ↑ Heinz Heiler: Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the media culture of the modern age. Königshausen & Neumann, 2003, ISBN 3-8260-2340-4 , p. 53.
  9. ^ A Test of the News - by Charles Merz and Walter Lippmann . August 8, 1920 ( archive.org [accessed December 25, 2019]).
  10. ^ Susanne Fengler, 2006.
  11. ↑ Noam Chomsky: Who rules the world? 3. Edition. Ullstein Buchverlage, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-550-08154-5 , p. 286 .
  12. ↑ Media criticism: Between transparency and conspiracy theories Federal Agency for Civic Education, accessed on May 4, 2017
  13. ↑ Sueddeutsche.de abolishes the comment function under articles.
  14. ↑ s. Website for the alternative media award for the special award for media criticism ( Memento from March 14, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  15. ↑ Agenda Setting / Intermedia-Agenda Setting Federal Agency for Civic Education, accessed on May 6, 2017
  16. ↑ Power without responsibility. The proliferating influence of the media and the disinterest of the Federal Agency for Civic Education, accessed on May 6, 2017
  17. ↑ Formation of opinion and control of the media Federal Agency for Civic Education, accessed on May 6, 2017
  18. ^ Media and Society in Transition Federal Agency for Civic Education, accessed on May 4, 2017
  19. ^ Walter Lippmann: Public Opinion (1922), German: The public opinion, Bochum: Brockmeyer 1990.
  20. ↑ Media and Society in Transition Federal Agency for Civic Education, accessed on May 6, 2017
  21. ↑ Power without responsibility. The proliferating influence of the media and the disinterest of the Federal Agency for Civic Education, accessed on May 6, 2017
  22. ↑ Hans Mathias Kepplinger : Rivals for power and morality. In: Journalism as a Profession.  ; Hans Mathias Kepplinger: Rationality and Ethics in Journalism. In: Journalism as a Profession.  ; Hans Mathias Kepplinger: The influence of political attitudes on news selection. In: Journalism as a Profession.  ; Hans Mathias Kepplinger: Allowed exaggeration in journalism. In: Journalism as a Profession.
  23. ↑ Uwe Krüger: Power of opinion. The Influence of Elites on Leading Media and Alpha Journalists - A Critical Network Analysis . Cologne 2013
  24. ↑ https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Journalismusforschung-Ganz-auf-Linie-mit-den-Eliten-3397578.html
  25. ↑ https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Leitartikler-und-Machteliten-3365501.html
  26. ↑ L. Hagen, A. Flämig, A.-M. In der Au: synchronization of news and advertising. How the advertising volume of companies correlates with their representation in Spiegel and Focus. In: Journalism. 59 (4), 2014, pp. 367-386, accessed on June 21, 2016.
  27. ↑ Ivo Rzegotta: Estate seduces to abandon . ( Memento from April 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) In: Transparency International Germany eV: Headlights. 39, main topic: media. April 2008, p. 9, accessed November 8, 2015.
  28. ↑ Discounts with aftertaste. ( Memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) In: Medien Monitor. Retrieved November 8, 2015.
  29. ↑ Enjoyment of favors. Journalism and corruption. ( Memento of March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) at: transparency.de , p. 39, accessed on November 8, 2015.
  30. ↑ Anja Spiegel: Until death do them part. ( Memento from April 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) In: Transparency International Germany eV: Headlights. 39, main topic: media. April 2008, p. 13, accessed November 11, 2015.
  31. ↑ The ad silence spiral. dossier.at, accessed on November 17, 2015.
  32. ^ U Committee: Chronology of the advertisement affair. diepresse.com, accessed on November 17, 2015.
  33. ^ Press funding in Austria The Bought Republic. faz.net, accessed November 17, 2015.
  34. ↑ Corruption case of advertisements? dossier.at, accessed on November 17, 2015.
  35. ↑ Media and Society in Transition Federal Agency for Political Education, accessed on
  36. ↑ Ulrich Wickert: The term “lying press” possibly launched by the Russian secret service ›Meedia. January 28, 2016, accessed December 27, 2016 .
  37. ↑ Formation of opinion and control of the media Federal Agency for Civic Education, accessed on May 6, 2017
  38. ↑ Such and such facts ( memento from February 19, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Rudolf Mitlöhner in: furche.at, February 15, 2017, accessed on May 6, 2017
  39. ↑ Media and society in transition. Internet and Web 2.0 as alternatives Federal Agency for Civic Education, accessed on
  40. ^ Franz Kössler: Poor journalism. In: The Standard. June 29, 2010. Retrieved May 6, 2017
  41. ↑ Media and Society in Transition Federal Agency for Civic Education, accessed on May 6, 2017
  42. ^ Lippmann Walter: Public Opinion (1922), German: The public opinion, Bochum: Brockmeyer 1990.
  43. ↑ see Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann : Die Schweigespirale. and Thilo Sarrazin : The New Virtue Terror. P. 137.
  44. ↑ Hans Mathias Kepplinger: Rivals for power and morality. In: Journalism as a Profession.  ; Hans Mathias Kepplinger: Rationality and Ethics in Journalism. In: Journalism as a Profession.  ; Hans Mathias Kepplinger: The influence of political attitudes on news selection. In: Journalism as a Profession.  ; Hans Mathias Kepplinger: Allowed exaggeration in journalism. In: Journalism as a Profession.
  45. ↑ A third of journalists feel green. ( Memento from August 15, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) In: Die Presse. dated December 8, 2008.
  46. ^ Siegfried Weischenberg, Maja Malik, Armin Scholl: Journalismus in Deutschland 2005. Central findings of the current representative survey of German journalists. In: Media Perspektiven. 7/2006, p. 353.
  47. ↑ The terror of the green opinion Jacobin Die Presse, accessed on May 6, 2017
  48. ^ Siegfried Weischenberg, Maja Malik and Armin Scholl: Journalismus in Deutschland 2005. Central findings of the current representative survey of German journalists . In: Media Perspektiven 7/2006, p. 353. "Journalism in Germany 2005" online ( Memento from March 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  49. ↑ A third of journalists feel green ( memento from August 15, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Die Presse, from December 8, 2008
  50. ↑ The terror of the green opinion Jacobin Die Presse, accessed on May 6, 2017
  51. ↑ In good hands: The most trustworthy professions in Austria Die Presse, accessed on May 6, 2017
  52. ↑ Transparency International: The majority of Germans consider the media to be corrupt. In: Zeit Online. July 9, 2013, accessed January 30, 2015 .
  53. ↑ Global Corruption Barometer 2013 - National results. In: transparency.org. Transparency International, accessed January 30, 2015 .
  54. ↑ Reader's Digest: Trusted Brands 2015 / Trust in Professions ( Memento of March 13, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Retrieved on May 6, 2017
  55. ↑ In the English original: "a great deal / quite a lot" vs. "not much / not at all" (trust in professions).
  56. ↑ Americans' Trust in Mass Media Sinks to New Low gallup.com, accessed May 6, 2017
  57. ↑ Cable News Viewers Still Turn To Fox First rasmussenreports.com, accessed May 6, 2017