Analysis: German media in a crisis?

KEHL AM RHEIN, Germany, Oct. 5 (UPI) -- Looming conglomerates, police raids at magazines and a questionable pre-election coverage: Is Germany's media landscape in a crisis?

Schroeder -- once termed the "media chancellor" for his amiable relationship with the press -- has whipped out harsh criticism at what he feels is a "conservative media alliance" against his bid for a third term in office.

"I am proud of the people of our country who weren't influenced by the media's manipulation and the media power," Schroeder had shouted at his cheering supporters, after the first results of the Sept. 18 vote reached the Willy-Brandt-Haus, the SPD's headquarters in downtown Berlin. The party had been hopelessly behind the conservatives just a day earlier, but then turned a decided race into a photo finish: The Schroeder party got 34.3 percent, just behind the Christian Democrats/Christian Socialists, who got 35.2 percent.

Schroeder continued his tirade in a now legendary TV performance later that night in a political talk show, when he insulted fellow politicians and the two moderators who tried to keep the show from escalating.

A conglomerate of false pollsters and biased journalists had tried to write him out of office, but "they failed grandly," he said with a raucous voice.

Schroeder drew much criticism for his overheated performance, even his wife Doris said it was "suboptimal."

In the days after the vote, however, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer (Greens) and Interior Minister Otto Schily (SPD) backed the chancellor's media criticism, saying the press should reexamine its own stance when it comes to politics.

Hendrik Zoerner, spokesman of the German Journalists Association, or DJV, Wednesday told United Press International in a telephone interview that is exactly what's happening.

"It's true that the journalists have placed too much emphasis on the pre-election polls," he said. "But there is a process underway that the German media critically reflects on what happened. In the next elections, there should be and likely will be more coverage of the people's sentiments, rather than of the predictions of the census organizations."

Zoerner said, however, while critical self-examination was a good thing, the chancellor's heated criticism was not justifiable. "Overall, the coverage was fair and unbiased," he said.

Leading media experts agree.

"I didn't see a media campaign against the chancellor," Lutz Erbring, a communications professor at Berlin's Free University, Wednesday told UPI. "It's a typical reaction -- politicians complain about bad press all the time."

The chancellor's sensibility might have been heightened by the criticism from some traditionally left-leaning publications, such as the Sueddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit, which was added on top of the negative editorials from the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Erbring said.

"The tabloid press, first and foremost of course the Bild newspaper, had a few mishaps," he said. "But generally, the reporting was fair and objective. There is no willingness politically manipulate people. The press can't really manipulate voters much -- that's a view that is heightened by politicians, but it's not backed by scientific studies."

Bild, with a circulation of nearly 4 million -- Germany's top-selling newspaper -- is owned by the Springer AG group. The flashy daily in the months ahead of elections had taken an aggressive anti-Schroeder stance. Springer, which also owns the daily Die Welt, recently announced it wants to takeover ProSiebenSat.1, a firm of four large commercial television channels.

While Erbring said the high costs in the TV sector naturally form large conglomerates, Zoerner said the concentration of such media power in one hand is dangerous.

"Springer, in contrast to (Germany's other media conglomerate) Bertelsmann, is a house that in the past has never hidden its tendency to politicize its media power," Zoerner said. "We see the combination of TV and newspapers with nationwide distribution as a negative development."

Schroeder's media criticism looks like the product of a failed marriage, as the chancellor in his early years in office often used the media to his advantage. The increased criticism at his economic and social reforms, even from once Schroeder-friendly publications, such as the newsmagazine Der Spiegel, alienated the chancellor, observers say.

The government seems to fire back -- Zoerner said he can't help but notice that police raids in newsrooms and investigations against journalists "in recent times have happened more frequently."

The most prominent case is a raid at Cicero, a political magazine featuring investigative journalism in the tradition of the "New Yorker." Federal agents last month searched the apartment of a Cicero journalist and the magazine's newsroom because it published an investigative article on terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi that quoted classified documents from Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office. The agency, according to information from Cicero, confiscated computer hard-drives and 15 boxes of paper files, many of them in no relation with the al-Zarqawi article. The author of the article and the magazine's editor are accused of aiding to publish classified materials.

While Schily defended the raids by arguing he wanted to find the leak inside the agency, editors and politicians criticized the measure, saying it was intended to intimidate journalists and their sources.

"Our guild will be even more on the lookout...if prosecutors search newsrooms," the influential newsmagazine Der Spiegel wrote in its latest editorial on Tuesday. "Critical distance to the government is our capital, and it will stay that way, no matter who governs in Berlin and elsewhere."