To the point: summer theater
After a 14-day break from the (Swiss) media, I came across an unusual article in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung last Wednesday while reading the morning paper—at home, but still on vacation.
On page 10, there was a quarter-page article with the rather juicy title for the NZZ: "Nude selfies from the Federal Palace". To take the edge off the disreputable title, the subtitle promised a serious discussion of the topic: "Open questions about the code of conduct of employees. I was still thinking to myself, what is this topic doing in the NZZ, when the first tweet already appeared, which I can unfortunately only quote in spirit: Today, a lot of research time is lost in many media houses. The twitterer was right.
What happened next was to be expected. Blick and 20 Minuten immediately picked up on the topic. Surely deeply affected inside that they missed the topic - or did not have the lady on the radar. The problem was that there were no pictures at all until now. Or else the NZZ journi wisely kept them under lock and key, deeply shocked about his own courage to have written such an article and to have triggered such an echo. The twittering - by now with the hashtag Selfiegate - became louder and louder. The well-known journi-Twitterers were joined by turned places and many people who seem to have an infinite amount of time on their hands. The hunt for the pictures was then also successful in a short time. Swarm horniness is what you call it. Or mathematics, after all, according to investigative NZZ research, the permissive Federal Palace employee had more than 11,000 users who followed her, so the probability that someone from one's own Twitter circle knows the lady is pretty high.
The individual articles were constantly updated, photo series were created and the first experts and politicians were interviewed about the matter. Many took it lightly and did not like to swing the moral club, some even made jokes about it. Others were outraged and saw the dignity of the Federal Palace in danger. Still others were concerned with the legal consequences. There were a lot of comments in the online comment columns, but the outrage was rather limited. And so it went on for the following days. People reported on the release of the lady, the indignation was thus alimented anew and the same pictures were clicked on again. Sandro Brotz said: "One would only too gladly read, what @sarsarsar means to the Sommertheäterchen around #Selfiegate. Unfortunately or fortunately for him, sarsar was just on vacation." A contribution to the quality discussion.
Pierre C. Meier, Editor-in-Chief
