Media in hunting fever - partly with bite inhibition

Let's start with my own wrong prediction: the morning before Swiss National Bank President Hildebrand threw in the towel, I announced to a small group of students that, from a "scientific point of view", German President Wulff would be the first candidate to resign. I was led to this misjudgement by a solid study in which Hans Mathias Kepplinger* distinguishes between scandals and journalistic conflicts. According to the Mainz-based media researcher, what both have in common is that the media "denounce actual or alleged grievances". In the case of scandals, however, after a short time there is a "broad consensus in the assessment of the causes of the grievances and the responsibility of their authors". In the case of journalistic conflicts, on the other hand, there is a public debate about how the "causes of the grievances and the responsibility of their authors" should be assessed.

If we compare the Hildebrand case with the Wulff case, the original misconduct of the two presidents, which gave rise to the scandal, is roughly "equivalent", even if the monetary benefit of the foreign exchange transactions of Hildebrand's wife was greater and these were also closer to the core business of the National Bank president than the borrowing of the German minister and later Federal President from "friends & family".

In contrast, the process of scandalization by the media was very different: in Switzerland, it was more of a journalistic conflict between the right-wing populist Weltwoche and the rest of the media, with some differentiated nuances, for example on the part of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Karl Lüönd summarized in Medienwoche that the reaction of many media was determined by the "anti-Blocher background noise" instead of the "normal journalistic reflex". In fact, there was a strange biting inhibition towards Hildebrand that would be hard to imagine in a larger country with an Anglo-Saxon journalism culture, such as the USA or the UK.

In Germany, on the other hand, we have the rare case of the media, from taz to FAZ, from Bild to Frankfurter Rundschau to public television, collectively urging the Federal President to resign - albeit also because, unlike Hildebrand, he made gross mistakes in his self-defense and, worse still, undertook one cover-up maneuver after another like a shyster. Kepplinger, who has spent decades comparing scandalization processes in the media, sums up that the journalistic conflict is "primarily about what the verdict should look like". In a scandal, on the other hand, "the verdict is determined after a short time. It is only a question of when and how it is executed."

I was therefore surprised by Hildebrand's resignation. He didn't even wait for the Swiss media to reach a verdict. In Germany, the scandalization process has now reached a new stage. They are waging the "war" against the Federal President that Wulff had threatened the Springer Group and the editor-in-chief of Bild, completely misjudging his options, and are insisting on the execution of the verdict by continuing the campaign on a daily basis. It has escalated into a strange, unsavory power struggle, the likes of which would be unthinkable in Switzerland.

There is another thing that the German and Swiss media have in common when dealing with scandals. Nick Lüthi draws attention to it in Medienwoche: "Their own behavior has so far remained unreflected." With a few exceptions, this applies to the mainstream media. However, they have long since lost their supremacy and thus their control over the discourse on journalism. After all, there are lively, ongoing discussions on the relevant platforms on the internet about this blind spot, which continues to reveal a lack of professionalism in journalism.

Even if scientists (see above) should exercise caution when making predictions - at least this forecast is probably correct: regardless of whether Wulff continues to sit it out or resigns after all, there will be losers on both sides in the end. The overly hypocritical moralizing media, following their hunting instincts, will lose credibility, as will the political class, which in Germany acts even less sensitively than in Switzerland across party lines in matters of retaining power. PS: Incidentally, Kepplinger plausibly explains Wulff's remaining in office as follows: He "cannot be voted out of office or deposed and therefore does not have to resign", provided "he can withstand the moral pressure". Wulff's calculation "looks different than normal: If he resigns, he loses everything (including his apparatus)." If he holds out, he will have a difficult time, but also "plenty of time to secure an acceptable exit".

*Hans Mathias Kepplinger: The Mechanisms of Scandalization. Munich: Olzog Verlag (to be published in February 2012).