Simulation garden
Column: Journalism has failed in the Reconvilier case: It’s better to pretend to practice it while sticking to the neoliberal mainstream, writes Oliver Fahrni. .
Column In the Reconvilier case, journalism has failed: it is better to simulate it and stick to the neoliberal mainstream. It was the year of Karl. That was the name of the ghost that made the executive floors in the Jura and in faraway London tremble. Karl heard everything. Karl was always there. Karl struck immediately: whatever happened at the Swissmetal Group - he immediately put it on the Internet. Sharply analyzed, with inside information, brightly illuminated. As a reminder: Swissmetal is a victim of the hedge fund Laxey, Group CEO Martin Hellweg dismantles the factory in Reconvilier, the metalworkers go on strike. Hellweg publicly cursed Karl. Hundreds of Swissmetal workers read him on strike watch. Journalists poached on his blog . They will do it again these days, when Laxey lands his coup, cuts up Swissmetal, sells it off, closes it down or joins it to a larger one, or pulls off one of the hedgers' plundering tricks. In any case, stockbrokers are expecting a rough ride - the share price recently hit the roof.
The specter is quite contemporary. Karl's power does not grow out of gun barrels, but out of the Internet. From the first day of the strike in Reconvilier, he masterfully pulled out all the stops: web, mail, blog. Many hundreds of pages, 1,500 e-mails, well over 100,000 visits. Readers of this media ecology column know what the author thinks of blogs. Karl was the daily rebuttal in 2006. For this, the cyber pirate received the Golden Mouse at the Swiss Blog Awards.
The prize was collected by a delegation of workers. One suspects: Karl is a pseudonym. In real life, he is a young, clever man who is doing his doctorate on an explosive topic. A character like Dostoyevsky could have invented: tall, serious, passionate. But completely from our time. His battle name is not simply personal protection - "Karl" conceived Karl as an art figure. As a role. He doesn't mirror exactly what his author thinks: "In some things I would think more radically, but in my role I have to decide between personal opinion and what Karl says in the service of the cause."
In the service of the cause? "Giving the workers a voice. To do that, I have to get involved with the economic rules, for example. This is about things like the role of a company in society." So, with investigative conscientiousness, he had a comic book character pitted against "Martinou" aka Hellweg. A single player with a high ethos. Karl's creator grew up with video games. So he fights, a little Marx, a little Captain Harlock, his favorite hero, for the industrial future in Jura.
In short, Karl did what journalists today often fail to do. He thought precisely about their role and "job description". Those who actually should have shed light on the Reconvilier case did not shine very brightly (apart from the usual exceptions such as Werner Vontobel and Jean-Martin Büttner). One would like to think that Swissmetal would have contained all the ingredients of attractive journalism: two "wildcat strikes", an autistic CEO, evil hedge funds, a lawless entrepreneur as president of the support committee, the active solidarity of an entire region, human fates, the dispute between French-speaking and German-speaking Switzerland, mediation by the Federal Council, a deceived Bernese cantonal councilor....
But even when an expert appointed by the mediator proved the strikers right against the CEO on almost all points, hardly any journalists wanted to speak to him. Not that there was little writing. SDA did a diligent job. What the union said, what Hellweg said, found its way into the media. The PR worked. Journalism did not work at all. Perhaps the expertise to penetrate the affair was lacking. More likely, colleagues were not interested. What really happens in this country takes place at some distance from the everyday life of journalists. People would rather simulate journalism and stick to the neoliberal mainstream.
Irritating, but revealing, what transpired: Karl, the artificial figure, spoke about Swissmetal in a much more real way than the real Helvetic journalism.
Oliver Fahrni is a freelance publicist and media ecologist.
The specter is quite contemporary. Karl's power does not grow out of gun barrels, but out of the Internet. From the first day of the strike in Reconvilier, he masterfully pulled out all the stops: web, mail, blog. Many hundreds of pages, 1,500 e-mails, well over 100,000 visits. Readers of this media ecology column know what the author thinks of blogs. Karl was the daily rebuttal in 2006. For this, the cyber pirate received the Golden Mouse at the Swiss Blog Awards.
The prize was collected by a delegation of workers. One suspects: Karl is a pseudonym. In real life, he is a young, clever man who is doing his doctorate on an explosive topic. A character like Dostoyevsky could have invented: tall, serious, passionate. But completely from our time. His battle name is not simply personal protection - "Karl" conceived Karl as an art figure. As a role. He doesn't mirror exactly what his author thinks: "In some things I would think more radically, but in my role I have to decide between personal opinion and what Karl says in the service of the cause."
In the service of the cause? "Giving the workers a voice. To do that, I have to get involved with the economic rules, for example. This is about things like the role of a company in society." So, with investigative conscientiousness, he had a comic book character pitted against "Martinou" aka Hellweg. A single player with a high ethos. Karl's creator grew up with video games. So he fights, a little Marx, a little Captain Harlock, his favorite hero, for the industrial future in Jura.
In short, Karl did what journalists today often fail to do. He thought precisely about their role and "job description". Those who actually should have shed light on the Reconvilier case did not shine very brightly (apart from the usual exceptions such as Werner Vontobel and Jean-Martin Büttner). One would like to think that Swissmetal would have contained all the ingredients of attractive journalism: two "wildcat strikes", an autistic CEO, evil hedge funds, a lawless entrepreneur as president of the support committee, the active solidarity of an entire region, human fates, the dispute between French-speaking and German-speaking Switzerland, mediation by the Federal Council, a deceived Bernese cantonal councilor....
But even when an expert appointed by the mediator proved the strikers right against the CEO on almost all points, hardly any journalists wanted to speak to him. Not that there was little writing. SDA did a diligent job. What the union said, what Hellweg said, found its way into the media. The PR worked. Journalism did not work at all. Perhaps the expertise to penetrate the affair was lacking. More likely, colleagues were not interested. What really happens in this country takes place at some distance from the everyday life of journalists. People would rather simulate journalism and stick to the neoliberal mainstream.
Irritating, but revealing, what transpired: Karl, the artificial figure, spoke about Swissmetal in a much more real way than the real Helvetic journalism.
Oliver Fahrni is a freelance publicist and media ecologist.
