The Köppel principle
Caught the eye The Europeanization of politics and the media requires journalists who dare to cross the border and articulate their different view of things.
Column The Europeanization of politics and the media requires journalists who dare to cross the border and articulate their different view of things.one of the popular platitudes is the talk of a "European public sphere", which is unfortunately still lacking. This is why the "European idea" currently seems so emaciated and hardly reaches the masses. This was the case again just recently when more than half of the electorate ignored the election to the EU Parliament, and there are good reasons to suspect that such a cross-border public sphere is a chimera that merely stems from the wishes of hardcore propagandists of European integration. In any case, it has nothing to do with the reality of modern mass media. The attempt to create a European newspaper with The European has failed on the market. And the Franco-German TV niche channel Arte only survives because, as a public broadcaster, it can ignore viewer restraint.
Apart from the very manageable transnational specialist audience, which is mainly informed about economic matters via the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal Europe and Herald Tribune, the following therefore applies: despite mass tourism, the universalization of consumer and popular culture and supranational institutions, information about current affairs is still tied to national communication spaces and media. The latter are determined by language, but also by culturally specific information interests and forms of presentation. The existing national public spheres cannot be blended into a European media pudding.
In the long run, the cases in which individual journalists work in other countries and promote the exchange between different media cultures are more consequential than such integration fantasies. This can be observed at the Berlin-based Springer newspaper Die Welt, which has had a Swiss editor-in-chief for two months: Roger Köppel is making himself increasingly visible, particularly through his desire to look at German conditions from a Swiss perspective. The familiar suddenly seems strange. What we were used to accepting with a shrug of the shoulders suddenly proves to be provocative, while other things that always trigger the same reflexes in the German scandalization circus are viewed more calmly.
One example: Köppel has not only set his paper on a Eurosceptic course that is otherwise rarely articulated in Germany, he is even risking a clash with the journalistic principles of his publishing house. His different view becomes even clearer when the new editor-in-chief takes up arms against the elitist arrogance with which the German establishment flatly refuses to allow its own people to vote on fundamental political alternatives. As a German subject, one has almost forgotten that the sovereign himself could and should decide what can drastically change his future. "The" Swiss, on the other hand, do not put up with politicians making brash declarations: A referendum on the draft European constitution is out of the question because it could be rejected!
In this case, journalistic border-crossing drastically demonstrates the forms of political participation that have been adopted north of Lake Constance. In this way, the confrontation with neighbors who tick differently becomes productive. So let's hope that more and more colleagues will relocate their workplaces across borders. This will create the only European public sphere worth wishing for: an internal market of experiences and opinions that relies on diversity as a source of unrest and challenge - and not on politically correct simplicity.
> Heribert Seifert is the NZZ's media and culture correspondent in Germany.
Apart from the very manageable transnational specialist audience, which is mainly informed about economic matters via the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal Europe and Herald Tribune, the following therefore applies: despite mass tourism, the universalization of consumer and popular culture and supranational institutions, information about current affairs is still tied to national communication spaces and media. The latter are determined by language, but also by culturally specific information interests and forms of presentation. The existing national public spheres cannot be blended into a European media pudding.
In the long run, the cases in which individual journalists work in other countries and promote the exchange between different media cultures are more consequential than such integration fantasies. This can be observed at the Berlin-based Springer newspaper Die Welt, which has had a Swiss editor-in-chief for two months: Roger Köppel is making himself increasingly visible, particularly through his desire to look at German conditions from a Swiss perspective. The familiar suddenly seems strange. What we were used to accepting with a shrug of the shoulders suddenly proves to be provocative, while other things that always trigger the same reflexes in the German scandalization circus are viewed more calmly.
One example: Köppel has not only set his paper on a Eurosceptic course that is otherwise rarely articulated in Germany, he is even risking a clash with the journalistic principles of his publishing house. His different view becomes even clearer when the new editor-in-chief takes up arms against the elitist arrogance with which the German establishment flatly refuses to allow its own people to vote on fundamental political alternatives. As a German subject, one has almost forgotten that the sovereign himself could and should decide what can drastically change his future. "The" Swiss, on the other hand, do not put up with politicians making brash declarations: A referendum on the draft European constitution is out of the question because it could be rejected!
In this case, journalistic border-crossing drastically demonstrates the forms of political participation that have been adopted north of Lake Constance. In this way, the confrontation with neighbors who tick differently becomes productive. So let's hope that more and more colleagues will relocate their workplaces across borders. This will create the only European public sphere worth wishing for: an internal market of experiences and opinions that relies on diversity as a source of unrest and challenge - and not on politically correct simplicity.
> Heribert Seifert is the NZZ's media and culture correspondent in Germany.
