Media and Minorities

164
Peter Widmann
weaknesses of the affected people, while viewers who watch thematic reports
link poverty to social factors. Both of these reference frames can be found in
the German media’s coverage of poverty-driven migration in 2013/14.13 In the
national coverage from 2014 that was evaluated for this essay, we find a preponderance
of thematically framed reports; however, it can be assumed that
the share of episodic reports is higher in the local and regional press.
The Selection of Topics
Ever since the fall of the Iron Curtain, the German media have presented
Roma mainly in connection with intolerable situations or as threats. This can
be seen even in the reports that identify Roma not as the root cause of a problem
but as victims of poverty and marginalization. German newspapers, television
programs, and online news sites almost never depict Roma as citizens
of the country or as classmates, neighbors, or colleagues. This is partially due
to the criteria that news editors use in deciding which events to cover. The
topics that make headlines usually concern conflicts between identifiable
parties, are unusual in some way, or provoke fear or other strong emotions.
Everyday unconflicted interactions rarely attract the press’ attention.
There is also a social component. Whereas poverty tends to make groups of
people more visible, the individual who has found his or her place in the work
force, a neighborhood, or the education system has become invisible. Invisibility
is not just the result of becoming an established member of society; it is
its prerequisite. If an employer or a landlord knows an applicant’s ethnicity,
that applicant has a much lower chance of getting the job or apartment. This
connection is self-reinforcing. Because of widespread clichés, this mechanism
has a greater impact on Roma than on other population groups. The more
invisible individual Roma who do not fit the stereotype of outsiders without
education or profession become, the more closely poverty comes to be associated
with the Roma people as a whole. This in turn increases the pressure to
remain invisible.
Large parts of the German population are unaware that many Roma with
family roots in Southeastern Europe have been living in Germany for decades
and enjoy middle-class prosperity. They include many of the migrant workers
13 However, TV news in the U. S. and Germany is dominated by episodic frames; see Georg
Ruhrmann and Denise Sommer, “Vorurteile und Diskriminierung in den Medien,” in
Diskriminierung und Toleranz: Psychologische Grundlagen und Anwendungsperspek tiven,
eds. Andreas Beelmann and Kai Jonas (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2009), 421; Denise
Sommer and Georg Ruhrmann, “Ought and Ideals: Framing People with Migration
Background in TV News,” Conflict and Communication Online 9 (2010): 1–15.
© 2016, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen
ISBN Print: 9783525300886 — ISBN E-Book: 9783666300882