Read the German version of this article here
The message could have come from IS: "May his hands be broken multiple times or simply chopped off." It isn't from IS, however, but from a German citizen, a reader. He was indulging in mutilation fantasies because he was upset about an article by Steffen Dobbert. Mr. Dobbert, an editor at ZEIT ONLINE, had written about Russian President Vladimir Putin.
A viewer referred to ZDF journalist Katrin Eigendorf as an "agitator."
ARD correspondent Golineh Atai (see interview on page 10), who reports regularly on the Ukraine conflict, faced especially harsh criticism: "This woman is disgusting," a "revolting propaganda dummy," and "political vomit."
All of these attacks are recent – and made publicly on the Internet. One doesn’t have to be a lawyer to know that if those writing these kinds of comments weren’t hiding behind fictitious names, they would have been in court long ago. What they are doing is immoderate, offensive and vile.
The readers of print media also produce ugly tirades, so it isn't just an Internet phenomenon.
But there is more commentary on the Internet than ever before. Twitter and Facebook are places where the opinionating, recommending and evaluating never ends. Online media invite their readers and viewers to state their thoughts at the end of an article, and sometimes to discuss the article.
Steffen Burkhardt, a media scholar in Hamburg, reminds us that, through the Internet, and for the first time, "people without specific qualifications can speak directly to large numbers of people and brand what they perceive as scandalous."
This is one of the great achievements of the digital world, and it ensures that the old order – the transmitters on one side and the receivers on the other – no longer applies. Journalists are no longer unquestioned authorities. At the same time, however, it is proving to be true, once again, that it is people, not the media, that are good or bad. It is not only the number of clever comments but, to an even greater extent, that of confused and insulting comments that has gone sky-high. "On the Internet, there’s always someone shouting 'scandal, scandal,' – and finding like-minded people faster than ever before. This creates a veritable frenzy of outrage," says Mr. Burkhardt.
This frenzy of outrage is increasingly directed against journalists.
The attacks cited above were against colleagues who write about Russia. But these transgressions of limits exist almost everywhere, affecting critics of the Pirate Party and AfD as well as proponents of a more generous refugee policy. A journalist at the FAZ newspaper, who believes that a moderate form of data retention makes sense, is dubbed a "mouthpiece of the police lobby" in social networks.
One journalist even received death threats. After Ronja von Rönne had written an essay about organized feminism in Die Welt, Frankfurt pastor Hans-Christoph Stoodt said to her: "Nobility is something for the lantern. Ça ira, von Rönne." The theologian was alluding to a French revolutionary song about the desire to see the nobility die a miserable death, be it hanging from a tree or on the gallows. In cyber-mobbing, according to media scholar Burkhardt, the attacker's aim is always to "symbolically kill" the person in question "through public isolation."
Something fundamental seems to have come unhinged here. It is as if something that was long considered a given no longer applies: that the media are something of a protecting power for citizens and for democracy as a whole. A fourth estate that somewhat reliably monitors the three state authorities, government, parliament and judiciary, and, despite all mistakes, enjoys the confidence of the people.
Kommentare