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in that direction, however, were simply portrayed
as propaganda, put forward to mask
power and business related interests.
This leaves us with one explanation for the
strong focus on the war: the fascination of horror,
the entertainment value of war. The sad
truth: We are used to the fact that TV stations
have torn down almost all moral barriers, as if to
say that privacy is theft., Years ago Tucholsky
said. “Satire is free to do anything.” Today this
quote could read: Television is free to do anything.
Reality in itself is no longer enough to
attract viewers; it is Joe Millionaire, not Joe
Schmo, who heralds the mainstreaming of
hyper-reality, while the war is pictured as an ultimate
showdown between good and evil.
In order to boost the ratings, the boundaries of
taboo are under attack. They are pushed further
each time, only to be transgressed anew.
It is well known that CNN rose to being a
respected international news source with Peter
Arnett’s reporting on the roof of a Baghdad hotel
in 1991. The development of transmission technology
continues to permit new feats in breaking
news coverage.
German stations have also focussed on these
“gee whiz” aspects. Even compared with international
coverage it is striking how RTL rejoiced
in the fact that one of their reporters, Ulrich
Klose, accompanied the allied troops. Public
broadcaster ZDF, on the other hand, in the newscast
Heute Journal, primarily relied on its correspondent
in Baghdad, Ulrich Tilgner. The men
on both sides of the front suggest proximity to
the events. But are they also able to keep their
journalistic distance?
On April 8th, after three international journalists
had died under American fire in Baghdad,
INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES
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correspondent Stephan Kloss appeared on the
newscast TAGESSCHAU, wearing a bullet-proof
vest. On the subsequent special edition BREN-
NPUNKT, his colleague Christoph-Maria
Fröhder conjectured (without a bullet-proof
vest) that the Americans, bothered by the coverage
they received, were no longer showing consideration
for journalists. One has to wonder,
though, what war correspondents had expected
before heading out on their dangerous, but also
highly prestigious assignments. (ZDF’s Tilgner,
as well as his colleague Antonia Rados, reporting
from Baghdad for RTL, are due to receive the
German Hanns-Joachim-Friedrichs Award for
Journalism this year.)
The scenario we have been sketching underscore
the limitations of war coverage. Correspondents
cannot report freely, even if they did
not have conditions to meet, watchdogs and censors
to deal with or pre-selected perspectives to
portray. It is not surprising that Ulrich Tilgner,
who was so intensively questioned by ZDF
anchors, comes in second in the “don’t know”ranking,
a statisical measure of the number of
statements which clearly expressed an assumption
or the admission of being unable to answer
a question from the studio in Germany. However,
he had good company in the guessing game.
Even highly praised colleagues like Anne Will,
Steffen Seibert and Peter Kloeppel presented
their audience with assumptions and feature
prominently in the rankings. In retrospect, it is
striking how many of the infinite number of
prognoses turned out to be speculations without
any foundation or evidence to substantiate the
claims. At first the Iraqis were reputed to be too
weak and unmotivated to fight back. Then, all of
a sudden, we were told they would engage in