Last but not least: News from the conspiratorial black box

In Germany, there is the Institute for Media Responsibility. And it had a great idea in May: to launch a nationwide "transparency week" in November, during which newspaper readers would have been given an insight into the creation of a news item. As laudable as the idea was, it was a resounding failure. Not a single medium agreed to take part in the campaign. 

Sabine Schiffer, project manager and media educator, took this to the verbal barricades. People need to be shown that news is something made by people and is not created in a black box. And: as the process of creating a news item is largely unknown to media users, this leaves room for myths and conspiracy theories to develop. Somehow, in view of this coherent and plausible argument, it is not at all surprising that Ms. Schiffer did not get in touch with those responsible shortly before the start of the Transparency Weeks, who were initially at least partially interested. 

According to the Institute's original media release, the aim of the campaign was to counteract everyday powerlessness by building media literacy. For one week, the newspapers should have prefaced each news item with a brief explanation of how the respective article came about, why it was selected, why which image was assigned to it, etc. However, the deputy editor-in-chief of Nürnberger Nachrichten, Alexander Jungkunz, rejects the accusation that the newspaper is a conspiratorial black box. The source of a news item can always be identified by the agency abbreviation or author's name. In addition to the space problem, such a project generates a textual effort that is not possible in a daily newspaper. 
 
The newspaper rejections in particular could have been a confirmation to Ms. Schiffer that news is something made by many people after all. Within a production process that cannot be changed at the drop of a hat.