Walter van Rossum

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Walter van Rossum (* 1954 ) is a German journalist .

Life

Walter van Rossum studied Romance studies , philosophy and history in Cologne and Paris. With his dissertation on Jean-Paul Sartre , To Prescribe. Jean-Paul Sartre 1939–1953 , he received his doctorate in 1989 from Cologne University .

Since 1981 he has worked as a freelance writer for WDR , Deutschlandfunk , Die Zeit , Merkur , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , Frankfurter Rundschau and Freitag . For the WDR he moderated, among other things, the "radio house talks".

He lives in Cologne and Morocco.

Publications

"The Tagesshow." Criticism of the unreality of news broadcasts using the example of Tagesschau (2007)

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After research and an ARD internship, Walter van Rossum questions the myth of an allegedly purely informative service of the “ Tagesschau ” in his book Die Tagesshow: How to make the world incomprehensible in 15 minutes . Using examples, he analyzes how the program transforms reality "into a kind of endless linden street ".

"Day after day, the Tagesschau offers a grotesque hodgepodge of fragmented information, half-truths, pseudo-news, crude ideological fanfares, platitudes and misinterpretations." The public service news bastion pervades an almost autistic narrative ritual. What remains is a stereotypical preparation of pseudo-news that degrades the viewer to an onlooker and in the end conceals everything in a subtle incomprehensibility. Punched empty phrases are underlaid with pictures that the author calls “blind”: Staged politicians' appearances, completely interchangeable crying women in Kosovo or the “almost immortal stock market backdrop”.

It is less about news than about the dissemination of language rules, staged politicians' appearances or "blinded pictures". "The Tagesschau is not just wrong, it invents information so that events fit into a specific political interpretation scheme that is available."

“The world is presented to us as a series of simulated events, a reality that does not place any value on our participation, a non-stop fait accompli . The real is always a process. The daily shows put the real to a standstill, freeze it in events that are not. Events in which the real grants an audience: a look at the cabinet table full of locked files, a press conference at Porsche or Telekom, where business captains set course but withhold the goal from the crew ”. Van Rossum also laments "a kind of voluntary synchronization of the media".

When he examined the news, he was “surprised by the reliability with which I could assume that the news was not correct. Whatever topic I chose - a lot of it was not even included in the book - the worst fears were fulfilled. ”Van Rossum writes about the mechanisms by which opinions are homogenized:

“There are certainly no specifications for this at ARD-aktuell , no Magna Charta, but it is possible in daily fine-tuning, in the many conferences and meetings, until the language regulation for the current topics has emerged. It is about a semblance of objectivity, which should be achieved through the greatest possible rapprochement with the political center. "

Reviews

The head of Deutschlandfunk -Nachrichten, Marco Bertolaso , criticized Rossum's presentation as polemical and criticized the fact that the database was too small (one broadcast day, November 1, 2006). The result is suggestive and generalized. In addition, Rossum questions the competence of the audience. His criticism is wrong, since news always had a stabilizing effect on the system, regardless of what the system is currently like: Public broadcasting was expressly created to stabilize a system, the democratic constitutional state of the Basic Law. Rossum's portrayal also ignores some aspects worthy of criticism: "The creeping poison of tabloidization and infotainment, the dangerous increase in speed due to half-baked information on the Internet, the commercialization of information as a commodity and the simple fact that many editorial offices have run out of raw materials." an analysis of the agencies as “topic setters and clocks in the news world”.

In the review of Die Zeit, Insa Wilke attests that Van Rossum's analyzes are always convincing if they are factual. He concisely describes the use of “blinded images” without any gain in knowledge that reproduce stereotypes. Overall, however, his criticism is polemically exaggerated. The reading is recommended, however, because it pulls the reader out of the irrigated attitude.

Arno Orzessek from DeutschlandRadio Kultur confirms Rossum in spite of all the criticism that the benefit of his investigation “beyond the gain of pleasure for all friends of incestuous media agitation” lies in “making the ingrained rituals of the news broadcasts visible, showing their natural law superficiality - given the minute reports to document the (less natural law) flaws, to reveal subtle and less subtle preliminary decisions of an ideological nature and to make the news business a little more transparent. "Van Rossum himself is a prisoner of the media trap:" Journalists do not watch the world, but almost exclusively others Media. ”Rossum also“ feeds ”the“ apparatus ”he criticized in his own way.

Radio feature

The results of the research were also processed in a radio feature: "The daily show - or the world in 15 minutes".

"My evenings with 'Sabine Christiansen'." Criticism of talk show culture (2004)

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In his publication Meine Sonntage with “Sabine Christiansen”. As the palaver rules us, Rossum takes a critical look at the "TV high mass " of the ARD, the talk show by Sabine Christiansen . "In the broadcasting area of ​​the German combat zone, there shouldn't be a political talk show that transmits the wishes of the executive floor to the people in a similar way - and shows an unbeatable journalistic naivety." The talk show reflects a contentious democracy. The leitmotif is always to weigh Germany in danger first in order to save it afterwards. There is actually no discussion: the “Germany Rescue Team”, the executive suite from politics, business, lobby and consultants “decreed their ten-year plans”. Sabine Christiansen, the assiduous chief secretary of the Juste-milieu , functions as a soundtrack in an endless loop with the same characters who just have different names. Almost every broadcast is an "organ-toed high mass for the God of growth". It is like this: if “the” economy is doing well, then “us” is doing well. Unfortunately, the economy is not doing well. And that's the fault of the rest of society. There is only one salvation: growth, economic growth, for which both the workers and the unemployed get a little less, but have to do more.

Reviews

Bettina Gaus from the TAZ says that van Rossum “deserves to be among the“ very few ”who tell the“ Kaiser ”in his new clothes that he is“ naked ”. [10]

"Black Book Germany" (with Gabriele Gillen, 2009)

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Selected specialist authors explain on 39 alphabetically sorted topics on 650 pages which facts and relationships in Germany are uncritically presented, twisted or concealed in the media and politically. "The political agenda of the Federal Republic of Germany is often based on blatant misinformation, half-truths, one-sidedness and set pieces of neoliberal propaganda", in this sense the book is dedicated to the goal of "creating a counter-public". The focus of the presentation ranges from A for old people to W for economics, topics such as rail privatization, data protection, financial markets, corruption and the rule of law. Striking examples are Gerd Bosbach's research on demography , Christoph Butterwegge's analysis of the welfare state , Gabriele Gillen's account of low wages, Albrecht Kieser's remarks on foreigner and asylum policy, and Werner Rügemer's explanations about "corruption". For Rossum, the black spots in the public consciousness are an expression of the influence of neoliberalism and the complementary “totalitarianism of the middle”. This can - at least for the time being - do without the classic repressive apparatus of a dictatorship, since it functions through consent or at least no objection. Behind the ignorance is a “mix of lack of character, corruption, disorientation and calculation”. The basis of everything is conformism. [11]

Reviews

Bettina Gaus from the TAZ considers the publication Gillens and Rossums to be “required reading for all those who want to sharpen their vigilance in their daily media consumption and do not want to believe everything that is presented to them as incontrovertible truth”. [12]

On Friday Matthias Becker criticized the book's lack of realism, the orientation of which corresponds exactly to the “political horizon of the parliamentary left-wing”. Unfortunately, it often follows the neo-liberal agenda in terms of selection and argumentation structure - “just the wrong way round: If some are outraged about social fraud, others do it about manager salaries, some say globalization, others say domestic demand, some want more market and others more State. ”It would be overlooked that no neoliberal elite opposes the rest of society. The lower class of Germany is divided in many ways, "in (still) employed and unemployed, in Germans and migrants, in modernization winners and precarious existences". In the representation of the trade unions one has generously ignored their concept, because unprincipled politics. [13]

Prizes and awards

Radio contributions

  • WDR 3 Gutenberg's World: Political Profiles with Walter van Rossum [1]
  • Studio time radio play: Love is a construction site - Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, Deutschlandfunk 2005.
  • Studio time radio play: the possible has its trace in being. The utopia of utopia , Deutschlandfunk, February 13, 2007
  • A cage full of ducks? Research on the Sauerland cell. Deutschlandfunk Feature, May 12, 2009, broadcast manuscript online
  • Love affairs. A messy love around 1913 Deutschlandfunk, July 15, 2014

Publications (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nils Klawitter: Criticism of the “Tagesschau”: Where the viewer is only an onlooker . In: Spiegel Online . September 30, 2007 ( spiegel.de [accessed May 21, 2019]).
  2. ↑ Rossum, Walter van, 1954-: The day show: how to make the world incomprehensible in 15 minutes . 1st edition, original edition. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-462-03951-1 .
  3. ↑ Broadside of the flagship news. Retrieved on May 21, 2019 (German).
  4. ↑ Interview with Walter van Rossum about the daily show on all channels (on SpiegelKritik. Media blog for media reflection, January 25, 2008).
  5. ↑ - Broadside of the news flagship. Retrieved on May 21, 2019 (German).
  6. ↑ Insa Wilke: permanent sprinkling. Walter van Rossum strongly criticizes the news broadcasts. In: The time. May 15, 2008, accessed January 31, 2016
  7. ↑ - Polemics against the news world. Retrieved on May 21, 2019 (German).
  8. ↑ DLF: Die Tagesshow - or the world in 15 minutes on the Deutschlandfunk website.
  9. ↑ http://www.deutschlandfunk.de/die-tagesshow-oder-die-welt-in-15-minuten-pdf-dokument.media.4ea67da5aefd73a355b91bf1599fb57d.pdf
    With YouTube the audio version is available.
personal data
SURNAME Rossum, Walter van
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German author and investigative journalist
DATE OF BIRTH 1954