The German government is allowed to provide information to journalists on its own initiative, but it is not allowed to regulate or control reporting. This may be exactly what was being attempted during the pandemic.
This is what it looked like when Chancellor Angela Merkel and her spokesman Steffen Seibert (right) publicly informed about corona measures. The Prime Ministers of Berlin (left) and Bavaria (middle) also had their say. However, there were other teachings that were not generally available
At the time of the grand coalition, the German government informed selected journalists in closed background circles about their intentions. Chancellor Angela Merkel of the Christian Democrats, for example, had ten to twelve reporters invited to the so-called “lentil soup format” in order to explain their motives for political decisions during the 2015 refugee crisis. This is what participants in the group report.
Apparently, this practice slacked off for a while. However, when it became apparent at the beginning of 2020 that the corona virus could become a major problem and that the Chancellor in particular considered very tough countermeasures to be necessary, targeted information for selected journalists was resumed.
Shortly before the joint conference of the Prime Ministers of the federal states (MPK) with the Chancellor, which decided on March 16, 2020 the first German lockdown (March 22 to May 4, 2020), the government spokesman at the time invited 20 to 25 colleagues to a zoom Invited to meet with Merkel, participants remember.
pressure on the states
It was the time when the chancellor also gave a dramatic television speech (“Since the Second World War, there has not been a challenge to our country that depends so much on our common solidarity.”) and publicly quarantined herself after encountering a corona-positive doctor.
In the further course of the crisis, on the days before important federal-state switching, groups of journalists called together again and again “were presented so forcefully that strict lockdowns are necessary that it was in newspapers and online portals on the day of the summit – and there was pressure on the federal states exercised». This is reported by the newspaper “Der Tagesspiegel”.
Media pressure seemed necessary to the representatives of the “tough measures” line, because individual federal states had proposed alternative pandemic protection measures on the basis of expert advice. In particular, North Rhine-Westphalia, governed by Armin Laschet, the successor to Merkel as CDU chairman and candidate for chancellor, caused the chancellor and her “team caution” in Berlin grief. From her point of view, it was important to avoid “opening discussion orgies” at all costs.
Right of the press to equal treatment
Public authorities, including the Chancellor and her Federal Press Office, are now permitted to offer more individual formats such as background talks in addition to general press conferences that are accessible to all media.
According to a recent report by the Scientific Service of the German Bundestag, which is available to the NZZ, the disclosure of information on one’s own initiative and one’s own selection of topics “must not result in regulation or control of the media or part of them”. In addition, the press has the right to equal treatment in journalistic competition.
According to the report, the state must treat press representatives “in principle the same in terms of information and press activities in terms of timing, content and scope”. If, for certain reasons, it is necessary to select or limit the number of participants, this must be based on “opinion-neutral and appropriate” criteria.
In order to be able to assess the journalistic effect of the Chancellor’s briefings and whether this effect could actually be used to exert “pressure on the federal states”, it would be essential to know which media were invited to these background events and which journalists were present.
Who was there? Who was invited and why?
In order to assess whether the selection of the media representatives was “opinion-neutral and appropriate”, according to the requirements of the scientific service, or whether critical journalists were preferred not to be present, one would have to know the criteria according to which the selection took place.
The NZZ, which, like many other German-language media, was not invited to any of the closed rounds, asked the Federal Press Office how many meetings of this kind there had been, when they took place, who was invited, who made the selection and according to what criteria this selection has been made.
A spokesman for the Federal Press Office responded to these questions as follows: “Government spokespersons regularly inform journalists in a variety of formats about the policies of the federal government as part of their constitutional information mandate. This finds i.a. in person, by phone or online. The content and organizational details are neither documented nor statistically recorded.»
neutrality and objectivity
This is – easily recognizable for every reader – not an answer to the questions of the NZZ. Calendars are apparently not kept or are secret. The scientific service of the Bundestag concedes in its report that “public authorities are not obliged to document the circumstances or content of the discussions in detail”.
However, it could well be in the interest of the public authorities to “document the participants and topics of the talks to demonstrate compliance with the requirement of neutrality and the requirement of objectivity”.
It is possible that the government at the time could not really be sure whether it could actually claim neutrality and objectivity when putting together its corona rounds. According to NZZ information, for example, not only science journalists were invited – which could have been a selection criterion. Perhaps the impression should be avoided that this is about “regulation or control” of reporting.
The cessation of a society
When asked by the NZZ whether there was still selective information for the press on Corona topics under the government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the Federal Press Office replies: “As far as we can understand, in the current legislative period before ‹Bund-Länder-Corona -Switch’ no meetings of government spokesmen with journalists.”
However, it is no longer about shutting down an entire society through lockdowns, curfews, school and company closures. It’s more about the country’s return to a normality that other European countries achieved much earlier. There is hardly any political dispute about this anymore.