Red Bull and the worst job in the world

Even the Wall Street Journal, whose readers are more likely to be interested in stock market tips than the journalistic profession, received over 195,000 likes on Facebook. Like countless other media outlets, Zurich's Tages-Anzeiger also jumped on the topic and announced online: "People would obviously rather become an executioner or a sewer worker than a journalist, who has the judging in common with the executioner and the clarifying in common with the sewer worker. ... We now know: The profession is actually the very last one. According to the latest survey conducted by the CareerCast job board over the past 25 years, journalism ranks 200th and last. It is followed by lumberjack and soldier. It's more popular to kill people and trees than to write about them." 

The fact that the ranking was not a survey at all and that it was "only" about newspaper reporters, i.e. not journalists in general and therefore not about TV presenters, talk show hosts or even editorial writers, no longer played a role. Like most of the other comments on the matter, everything else was pretty predictable: there was a lot of self-pity about the stress of the job and the miserable pay, but it wasn't really that bad after all. And on closer inspection, journalism is - despite all this - still one of the most beautiful professions in the world.

However, it is precisely this closer look, which should actually be part of the core of journalistic virtues and professionalism, that has once again been lacking. The ranking proclaims sheer nonsense, at least to the extent that it has been proven that newspaper editorial offices almost everywhere in the world can hardly resist the rush of young people, however much print media may be the dinosaurs of the media industry. Nevertheless, the CareerCast "study" has been printed and linked to thousands of times. Hardly any professional journalists seem to have asked themselves whether the creators of the rankings deliberately put newspaper reporters at the bottom of the list - for the simple reason that they know the industry pretty well and are able to realistically assess the Pavlovian reflexes of journalists.

It is frightening how easily journalists fall for the PR industry's attention maximizers and how unreflectively and unprofessionally they spread gross nonsense if there is hope that it could generate circulation or ratings. Journalists today are better trained than ever before and many degree courses and journalism schools now also give them an insight into the PR kitchens - which is urgently needed if the dwindling number of journalists in editorial offices is to hold their own against the growing superiority of public relations workers. They now prefer to call themselves "communications managers", which somehow ennobles them compared to the "workers" they no longer want to be. And it is also treacherously honest, because it bluntly postulates who the real managers of public communication are now - no longer journalists, editors-in-chief and their leading media. It is best to avoid them - or to provide them with such sensational fodder that they are literally forced to report.

Red Bull has brought this principle to perfection. It took years and cost the lives of several extreme athletes before the mainstream media finally addressed the cynical nature of this marketing machine. And strangely enough, the scandalization has so far gone surprisingly lightly for Red Bull - perhaps because at least at this point a few not-so-stupid journalists have noticed: Whenever they point the finger at Red Bull, three fingers point back at themselves.