We continue to hear the testimony of a writer who was more than likely murdered for what he exposed about the rampant dishonesty of the global controlled press.
An interesting undergraduate thesis from Munich put together a list of the adjectives and adverbs used in select articles about Obama (USA) and Putin (Russia) in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung between 2000 and 2012. The words selected were ones that implied a value judgement in their description of Obama or Putin.
The adjectives used in the FAZ to describe Putin had overwhelmingly negative connotations, including: threatening, rough, aggressive, confrontational, anti-western, power-political, untruthful, cool, calculated, cynical, harsh, abrasive, non-substantive (arguments) and implausible (arguments).
The words used to describe Obama had a completely different tone: committed, fanatically welcomed, enthusiastic, conciliatory, praised, hopeful and resolute. In plain language: The reporting in the once renowned FAZ newspaper is definitely not neutral, independent, unbiased nor objective these days.
So where is this bias coming from? Does this style of reporting possibly have anything to do with the closeness that the FAZ's writers have to certain elites and powerful circles? In the following chapters, we won't only be considering the FAZ when it comes to this question. We will also look into why the mainstream media doesn't even want you to imply that they're close to the elite.
Chapter one, scene two: A few years ago, the reporter Thomas Leif painted a rather conspiratorial picture in the ARD television documentary Strippenzieher und Hinterzimmer (Puppet Masters and Back Rooms). In it, journalists, ministers and party officials appeared to all be sitting in the same boat, isolated from the common folk and getting along like gangbusters.
Viewers got to see how politics is made in secret meetings behind the scenes. The film was about a corrupt world of cozy connections. What was being shown, however, wasn't a conspiracy theory. The film was controversial, because the people being shown in it were the perpetrators. They thought that this form of corruption was completely normal.
The journalists portrayed in the documentary took it as an affront when they were simply asked about these secret networks operating in the background. When the NDR news magazine Zapp questioned a member of one of these shadowy groups, they got the response, “We’re dealing with secret things, and this means: We want to be the ones to understand politics. A viewer or listener, or reader doesn't need to know that. They only have to understand what we say."
The viewers and readers only have to understand what the journalists report? They shouldn't even get to know who wants which news and what messages distributed at all?
Regarding secret meetings, NDR cited a journalist as follows: "What we do there is an industry secret. The same thing goes for lobbying. A lobbyist never talks openly about who they talk to, which documents they receive, where they pass them on and what happens as a result. This is comparable."
A former editor at ZDF said: "The advantage is simply that we get to learn the truth and then – as bitter as it may be for some - we aren't allowed to publish or broadcast it."*
Really? The truth is reserved exclusively for journalists? And then they're not allowed to publish it? What is really going on out there? If anyone still believes that the news is balanced, honest and reliable, this book is going to shatter those illusions for you.
Personally, the illusions I had about journalism and truthful reporting were shattered many decades ago. I can remember the exact day it happened: It was August 2, 1990, the day the Iraqi army marched into Kuwait. At the time, Saddam Hussein had always been shown in the best light by the German media. Suddenly, they needed a story to make the Iraqis look like the very definition of evil.
This was done by the PR agency Hill & Knowlton. They specialize in lies. They made up a story about Iraqi soldiers going into Kuwaiti hospitals, tearing helpless babies out of their incubators and leaving them on the concrete floors to die, and then taking the incubators from Kuwait to Baghdad as war booty.
This horror story was cooked up to justify the USA's entry into the war to "free" Kuwait. Amnesty International helped spread the incubator lie. In December of 1990, AI published a report about the human rights violations in Kuwait where the incubator lie was depicted as the alleged reality.
On January 12, 1991, the US Congress voted in favor of the war against Iraq. At a US Congressional hearing on October 10, 1990, a young girl by the name of "Nayirah" testified that she had seen with her own eyes how Saddam Hussein's soldiers threw the babies on the cold cement floors of the hospital in Kuwait and steal the incubators. This heartbreaking testimony, about how evil Saddam Hussein and his henchmen supposedly were, was broadcast into every living room in America – and of course in Germany as well – and it produced the desired mobilization of public opinion in favor of the war.
Later, it came out that the whole story was made up. The girl turned out to be the daughter of Saud bin Nasir Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador in Washington. We also learned that she had received acting lessons from the Hill & Knowlton PR agency before delivering her tear-jerking testimony. The Kuwaiti government had paid the media and PR agencies a total of 12 million USD for this propaganda campaign.
At the time, I was already an editor at a newspaper. I witnessed first-hand how these made up lies were printed in many German newspapers with the purpose of bringing German public opinion to the boiling point: Before that, Saddam Hussein had heen portrayed as a "good leader" in Germany, but overnight, along with the people of Iraq, he was to be downgraded into some kind of insect.
The German media's efforts were a success. Not too long before that, I just happened to be on the front lines of another war, shortly after the Iraqis had launched a chemical weapons attack. Saddam Hussein's soldiers had just massacred Iranians with poison gas made in Germany. That was at Zubai in July of 1988. I will describe that in more detail later.
I took horrifying photos of the Iranian victims of this gas attack, whose brains had flowed out of their eyes, noses and mouths. You would suppose there would have been a wave of outrage in Germany after this. Instead, there was basically silence among German journalists. In contrast to the incubator lie described above, the gassing of the people I saw in Iran was a brutal reality. None the less, once the wave of incubator propaganda hit, it was like the masses' brains had been hacked.
All at once, everyone began to scream: War! War! War! This wouldn't have been remotely possible if Germany's alpha journalists hadn’t marched in the vanguard with their disinformation campaign – and I was enlisted in the opinion cartel's disinformation troops.
This book is the first part of three explosive publications about the media industry. In the following chapters of this book, you will learn how secretive networks actually control the flow of information in Germany. This book deals with the sticky proximity of the German media to elite circles, with its shocking consequences.
In a subsequent book, we will learn about the tricks the large German publishing houses use to systematically deceive their advertisers. You'll get a little taste of this here in this book first. In the third book, I will reveal which journalists are on which internal PR industry lists. This will also be devastating, because German reporting has already been bought for the most part. [The Author lost his life before he could write the sequels.]
Still, I will also reveal some of the names in this book as well. So, let's get this book started by concentrating on the simulated freedom of press, especially the lobbying work, the secret networks of our opinion-makers and the consequences these have on reporting in Germany.
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Elite Networks and Intelligence Agencies
The first thing I have to say again is that I, myself, the author of this book, was guilty of this. Looking back, I was corrupt, I was manipulative, and I dealt in disinformation. It was exactly this same inability to keep a distance, what I accuse other journalists of doing in the following chapters, that led me to believe it was perfectly normal for such a long time.
With my boss' approval, I took advantage of the press discounts, accepted the all-inclusive invitations to 5-star hotels and went on buddy-buddy trips with top politicians. I held positions in various foundations, and I gave lectures at organizations affiliated with intelligence agencies.
When I look back, I can see that as an employee of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), I was often bought for positive reporting - and I let them buy me. What's more, my employer had my back, because they expected it from me like it was a given. Today, I can talk about it – but that doesn’t make it any better.
Some things have changed since then. Today, however, bought reporting is still taken for granted. For example, the EU presently pays "independent" journalists to polish the EU's image in the supposedly "independent" media.
Thus, both private and public media companies court the EU to get their hands on the PR money they make available. This is known as bought journalism. It also works in the opposite direction as well: Two British reporters offered EU delegates money to change some laws – and they were successful."
In Switzerland, journalists often receive envelopes with 500 Swiss francs (around USD 500) for participating in "press conferences." A publisher in Switzerland also offered politicians very flattering biographies if they would also purchase an advertisement along with it as well."
If it is called journalism, then it should also have something to do with journalism. Günther Jauch, for example, the former host of the critical news magazine Stern TV and one of the most well-recognized journalists in Germany, "in a 20-minute infomercial for Amway," pitched “a US company that sells detergent and personal hygiene products by means of a pyramid scheme."
Günther Jauch
As a critical journalist, can you do something like this? Where are the boundary lines? As a journalist in Germany, should you be hawking products? Well, it's something that happens every day in the real world. At any rate, nothing stuck to the Teflon-man Jauch. However, looking back, it is extremely embarrassing for him.
Moreover, how embarrassing is it if a university thesis on biased reporting in the German media (“Biased Attribution in German Print Media") includes the following about an article written by Horst Bacia, a journalist at the FAZ:
The analysis of this article with regard to its development of the topic, thus, at best, results in an argumentation that, in its presentation, can be compared to that of an advertising text.
Excuse me? After a detailed analysis, a university thesis certifies that one of the most celebrated FAZ columnists writes at the level of advertising copy? Boundaries that should remain clear are obviously getting blurred here. So, how does the communications scientist Wolfgang Donsbach describe the general relationship between truth and journalism in Germany?
In Germany, this tendency to evaluate and select information corresponding to one's own opinion is much more profound than it is in other countries.
The manipulation of the readers has been noticeable at the FAZ for many years. Dr. Heinz Loquai gave a famous speech in 2003 where he said the following about the FAZ: We learn from the FAZ's Washington correspondents that, among other things, Bush studies the bible every day, prays regularly and bases his actions on the question, "What would Jesus do?"
The president is a "paragon of modesty and close to his people." There may be “an arrogant bone or two in Bush's body," but he is “a man of love." His "portion of missionary fervor" is “softened by statesmanlike prudence," through "patient waiting," the "natural political talent's decision" has been "expressed."
Although Bush may know that he is not an intellectual, he can rely on "his political instinct, his wisdom and his natural wit "
So (...) lectured, we can continue to count on the judgement and objectivity and weekly newspapers' America of leading German daily correspondents! Embedded with the allied troops, embedded in the political-media network in Washington – what's the difference?