Bruce Allen Scharlau PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

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be used if the public were confronted with spectacular events. If not,
the rewards were believed to only add psychological weight to the
terrorists. This was decided, however, in January 1972, i.e. before the
May 1972 bombing campaign.60 Events of terrorist nature have also been
conducted by the government and attributed to terrorist groups, as was
discussed with regard to the 'CelIe Hole' in chapter six.
Two more examples show how the media and government relationship
works at opposite ends of the spectrum between unfettered and restrained
media coverage in on-going terrorist incidents. For West Germany the two
ends were the Lorenz abduction in February/March 1975, where terrorists
virtually dictated broadcast policy to the government,61 and the
Schleyer abduction coupled with the Lufthansa hijacking in
September/October 1977 when the government requested, and mostly
received, a news embargo on the events. This news embargo went further
than anything else in a peacetime democracy.62
Some resul ts of the Peter Lorenz abduction can be seen in its
coverage in the Springer press publications. Between 28 February and 6
March (from the day after the kidnapping to the day after Lorenz's
release) the quality paper Die Welt used 42.8%
of their political
reportage space for the abduction, while the mass circulation Bild used
72.51% of its political reportage space for the abduction.
Comparatively, the Stuttgargter Zeibmg used 31. 7%
Rundschau used 38.68%.63
The
and the Frankfurter
Springer press writers used various writing techniques to
communicate with their readers that they too were in danger from the
terrorists. A 'diffusion I
process was engaged to intimate that the
terrorists were part of a larger network of intellectuals and others
indirectly responsible for the abduction. Furthermore, by using various
, intimacy building I techniques such as 'concretism ' (to provide the
impression that the readers have all of the information), 'offers of
identification I
(which idealises the victims and brings them closer to
the reader), and 'psychologising' (to reduce the terrorists' motives to
purely private and psychological ones), the writers made the public feel
endangered. All of these techniques were also employed to a lesser
extent in the other newspapers. 64
60 Cobler (1978), 169.
61 Melvin J. Lasky, "Ulrike Meinhof and the Baader-Meinhof Group"
Encounter 6, 1975, 9-23, 15-6.
62 Schmid, de Graaf, 154.
63 ibid., 79-80.
64 ibid. I 80.