Quiet days in Rome
Noted: Too stupid, too over-the-top, or simply «more of the same»: A plea—disguised as a media diary—for more political (factual) insight and less journalistic vandalism.
Column Too stupid, too shrill or simply "more of the same": a plea disguised as a media diary for more political (factual) understanding and less journalistic vandalism.Freitag. Who is the fairest of them all? The Pope is drowning in public, God is stretching out his hand, and the (smaller) part of the world visible to us is suffering too. This is disloyal competition for Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's trash prime minister. Because elections are coming up. So he spends the whole evening chatting about lifts and hair implants on one of his TV chains. His own. He can recommend them. The private sphere as the destruction of politics by other means. But this time, many Italians are noticing the perversion. Consoling: reality strikes back.Wednesday. "We are Pope" cries Bild. Well, if it's not enough to be world champions, the blood-and-soil tabloid will take a pope. No matter that the majority of the nation is reformed or unbelieving. The main thing is German. The gazettes are full of Ratzinger. Moments like this shed light on the state of the industry. It is disastrous. Blunders ("Rottweiler", "Papa Ratzi", "Panzerkardinal") chase chattiness. Where is the paper that asks an excellent author to write the one, brilliantly conceived piece about the event, and that's that?
Saturday. You unsuspectingly brush your teeth to show them to the world, listen to Deutschlandfunk and freeze. I think I'm being hit by an ICE train. What was I smoking yesterday? But no, it's media-savvy: Franz Müntefering has criticized excesses of capitalism. Is the SPD not completely speechless after all? Münte & Marx. Radically chic. Violating taboos creates a mood. In line with the program, capital, the media and politics are getting ready to rage. However, a "debate on capitalism", as it is often called, is not growing out of it. For too long, the SPD has read capital's every wish from its lips. For too long, the Chancellor has left people alone with the assertion that politics can no longer do anything against the power of the economy. What no one notices in this simulation is that we journalists should have started the debate long ago. Of course, we should have researched, read, thought, in short: engaged with reality.
Monday. Nadja Auermann, we hear, no longer believes in fairy tales. That's not a bad thing. She is one. Everyone gets the fairy tales they deserve. Not another word about the man on the throne of Peter. A Catholic friend says to me: "First you pour Ratzinger all over us as if Rome were the world, then suddenly you lose all interest. How can that not make you sick?"
Tuesday. Watched Pasolini's "Salò and the 120 Days of Sodom". It's been 30 years since they beat him to death on the beach at Ostia. A hard, lucid movie. Sex, torture, the banality of horror, the availability of man to man. The victims, led on dog leashes, eat shit before they are put to death. A writer in attendance brandishes a picture of a naked prisoner on the leash of US soldier L.B. at Abu Ghraib. It is the same image. It happens every day in many corners of the world. But the photo shows nothing more: we talk about L.B., her guilt, her trial, but the context disappears.
Wednesday. Gerhard Schröder warns us journalists against playing politics. He castigates tabloidization, personalization and also scandalization, all simple exaggerations and "fake conflicts" that distract from the analysis of complicated problems. I see. You can understand the man. He fears being written out of office by a coalition of Bild, Spiegel and FAZ. You might even agree with him if he hadn't taken a liking to the phrase that in 2006 it was "all about victory or Viktoria". Viktoria is his daughter's name.
> Oliver Fahrni is a freelance journalist and media ecologist.
Saturday. You unsuspectingly brush your teeth to show them to the world, listen to Deutschlandfunk and freeze. I think I'm being hit by an ICE train. What was I smoking yesterday? But no, it's media-savvy: Franz Müntefering has criticized excesses of capitalism. Is the SPD not completely speechless after all? Münte & Marx. Radically chic. Violating taboos creates a mood. In line with the program, capital, the media and politics are getting ready to rage. However, a "debate on capitalism", as it is often called, is not growing out of it. For too long, the SPD has read capital's every wish from its lips. For too long, the Chancellor has left people alone with the assertion that politics can no longer do anything against the power of the economy. What no one notices in this simulation is that we journalists should have started the debate long ago. Of course, we should have researched, read, thought, in short: engaged with reality.
Monday. Nadja Auermann, we hear, no longer believes in fairy tales. That's not a bad thing. She is one. Everyone gets the fairy tales they deserve. Not another word about the man on the throne of Peter. A Catholic friend says to me: "First you pour Ratzinger all over us as if Rome were the world, then suddenly you lose all interest. How can that not make you sick?"
Tuesday. Watched Pasolini's "Salò and the 120 Days of Sodom". It's been 30 years since they beat him to death on the beach at Ostia. A hard, lucid movie. Sex, torture, the banality of horror, the availability of man to man. The victims, led on dog leashes, eat shit before they are put to death. A writer in attendance brandishes a picture of a naked prisoner on the leash of US soldier L.B. at Abu Ghraib. It is the same image. It happens every day in many corners of the world. But the photo shows nothing more: we talk about L.B., her guilt, her trial, but the context disappears.
Wednesday. Gerhard Schröder warns us journalists against playing politics. He castigates tabloidization, personalization and also scandalization, all simple exaggerations and "fake conflicts" that distract from the analysis of complicated problems. I see. You can understand the man. He fears being written out of office by a coalition of Bild, Spiegel and FAZ. You might even agree with him if he hadn't taken a liking to the phrase that in 2006 it was "all about victory or Viktoria". Viktoria is his daughter's name.
> Oliver Fahrni is a freelance journalist and media ecologist.
