Last but not least: Bribery - a gray area in the media
The organization Transparency International has called for stricter rules against bribery and corruption in the German media. At the beginning of last year, various companies wanted to shed their reputation as "bribers of journalists".
According to Wuv.de Telekom, which had canceled press discounts on certain mobile phone contracts. Deutsche Bahn and Air Berlin had previously shelved their discounts. At the same time, Springer-Verlag announced that its editors had agreed to no longer accept press discounts in future. As Wuv.de writes, the publishing house Gruner + Jahr, for example, agreed: "Editors may only accept invitations up to 40 euros."
Journalists have repeatedly accepted benefits and invitations from commercial enterprises. This is shown, among other things, by the study by Transparency and the journalists' association Netzwerk Recherche, "Pleasing favors: Journalism and corruption". According to the study, there is little interest in combating corruption in the media companies. Furthermore, the editorial guidelines are often not clear enough and there is a lack of binding consequences. "Especially in our industry, where credibility is a valuable asset, more transparency and better corruption prevention should be possible," says Günter Bartsch, Managing Director of Netzwerk Recherche, to Wuv.de.
However, agreements such as the Gruner + Jahr publishing house do not generally resolve the gray area: As Anja Pasquay, press spokeswoman for the Federal Association of German Newspaper Publishers (BDZV), tells the news agency DPA, there is still room for improvement, for example if travel reports were clearly labeled as to how they came about. "This is already being handled in exactly the same way," she explains. Deputy Transparency Chairman Jürgen Marten is not entirely of the same opinion. As he told Wuv.de, many companies seem to simply rest on the belief that their journalists are not corruptible instead of systematically preventing corruption and creating transparency.
However, the willingness to take bribes in journalism is not only dependent on regulation, but also a question of personal code of honor. And perhaps, but only perhaps, somewhere in the gray area of bribery there is also a connection to the decreasing quality control of some publishers in favor of a more profit-oriented basic concept. (uma)
