How the new German media makers promote simplicity

The nomination of the 43-year-old author and activist Ferda Ataman as the new “Federal Commissioner for Anti-Discrimination” has triggered a debate in Germany. While the Green Minister for Family Affairs, Lisa Paus, in whose department the post falls, praised Ataman’s “great commitment to an inclusive, democratic society”, bourgeois politicians and Islamism experts like Ahmad Mansour reacted with horror:

The German Bundestag is expected to vote on the personnel in the coming week. The NZZ last reported on Ferda Ataman and the work of her association “New German Media Makers” in March 2021. Here is the text:

“It’s a world premiere,” says journalist Ferda Ataman when she presents her club’s “Diversity Guide”. The Neue Deutsche Medienmacher want to help German media houses with instructions and checklists. Finally, the proportion of people with a migration background in society is increasing, but this is not yet sufficiently reflected in journalism. “Our proposal: a 30 percent quota for journalists from immigrant families, for black journalists and media workers of color,” can be read in the press documents for the handbook.

What is missing, write the Neue Deutsche Medienmacher, is the insight that today’s world cannot be explained by yesterday’s journalism. That is correct. And the promotion of people with a migration background in journalism is undoubtedly a goal worth supporting. But is the return to judging people based on their skin color, their origin or their gender really progressive or is it rather “from yesterday”? Ferda Ataman is convinced of the opposite. A classification of people according to external characteristics is already there, as studies on discrimination have shown. Quotas, she says, could be a countermeasure.

However, one looks in vain for the demand that diversity in journalism should also be expressed in different opinions among the New German Media Makers. Rather, attempts are made in many places to limit media diversity as soon as it comes to positions that do not suggest a left-wing political attitude. One reads in a contribution by the long-standing chairwoman of the Neue Deutsche Medienmacher, Sheila Mysorekar, by liberals as apologists for fascism. When Ferda Ataman of the CDU asked the rhetorical question on Twitter after the state elections in Baden-Württemberg whether her shift to the right was bearing fruit, it didn’t sound any different.

The fact that this new handbook and the attitude behind it are relevant is because the association is quite influential in German journalism. Founded in 2008, it says it has 500 members and around 2,000 people belong to the entire network. All members are networkers, not all networkers are also members of the association. Ferda Ataman, chairwoman of Neue Deutsche Medienmacher, is a well-known journalist. She publishes, among other things, in the “Spiegel”.

Business model (anti-)racism

The Neue Deutsche Medienmacher are convinced that German society has a structural problem with racism. Not least because of this, they find racism everywhere. In a study, the association found that only about 6 percent of editors-in-chief have a migration background. Hence the tip: “As a media company, get an idea of ​​the proportion of migrant journalists in your ranks, disclose this diversity data transparently and formulate clear targets (soft ‘quotas’) that can be checked.” From now on, the executive floors should ask their employees where they are really come here. Ataman’s latest book is entitled “Stop asking – I’m from here!”. There you can read: “Somehow everyone thinks I’m a Turkey expert and an Islam scholar. Just because of my name and my parents’ country of birth. Is not that crazy?” A legitimate question – also to your own address.

Such double standards characterize the work of the Neue Deutsche Medienmacher. Another example where the association acts racist itself in its supposedly anti-racist work is the “Golden Potato”. Since 2018 he has been awarding this negative prize “for particularly underground reporting”. The term “potato” is considered a disrespectful slang term for Germans without a migration background. Because there is no historical oppression and discrimination associated with potatoes, the term “potato” is not racist. It is hardly surprising that they awarded “Spiegel TV” last year for allegedly distorting, stigmatizing and racist reporting on clan crime.

The question remains: How is such an association financed?

The Neue Deutsche Medienmacher are mainly occupied with project work. According to the managing director Konstantina Vassiliou-Enz, work is currently underway on twelve projects, such as the information platform for refugees and third-country nationals “Handbook Germany”, the “No Hate Speech Movement” or a mentoring program. In 2019, the association worked on eleven projects, with funding totaling 1,550,000 euros. Most of it, 917,068 euros, flowed into the “Handbook Germany” project. In 2020, the association took on further projects, with public and private funding totaling 1,892,800 euros this year. Income from membership fees, donations and prize money was 32,000 euros in 2019 and 43,000 euros in 2020.

The managing director estimates that the funds of the association consist of about one third from private funds and half to two thirds from public funds. There is no project that is one hundred percent publicly financed and runs entirely without own funds or third-party contributions. A look at the partners on the website helps to get an overview of the sponsors. Some of them are willing to provide information about their donations to the Neue Deutsche Medienmacher. It turns out that tax money flows in abundance.

Kindly supported by the state

A total of 194,455 euros came from the Ministry of the Interior in 2019 and 204,039 euros in 2020 for the projects “We keep talking” and “We are a topic of conversation!” as well as for the development of a community platform for third-country nationals who are entitled to stay in Germany.

The Federal Government Commissioner for Integration, Annette Widmann-Mauz, funded the central information platform for new immigrants “Handbook Germany” with around 850,000 and around 900,000 euros respectively in 2019 and 2020, as well as the trainee program “Paths into Journalism” with around 150,000 or around 100,000 euros.

In 2019, the association received a total of 121,000 euros from the Ministry for Family Affairs as part of the federal program “Live Democracy”. In 2020, 191,896 euros went to the “No Hate Speech” project.

In the past two years, the Neue Deutsche Medienmacher received a total of 75,888 euros from the Federal Agency for Civic Education for interactive animated videos on the Basic Law (“What if . . .?”).

Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg has been working with the Neue Deutsche Medienmacher in the past two years as part of a mentoring program. This was “supported with a low five-digit amount” and just relaunched on similar terms.

There were grants in previous years as well. In 2017, for example, the Ministry for Family Affairs invested around 46,000 euros in the project “Creation of a dossier to depict the discussions on gender equality data”. There you read in a post of the problem that all men at the conference of interior ministers are white. In addition, white people are also overrepresented in the Bundestag. According to the authors, equality should not be limited to gender.

Such an argument – it was also found in the presentation of the new “Diversity Guide” – makes it clear how little the new German media makers think of freedom of choice and the rules of representative democracy. For them, it is constitutive that it is not external and unchanging characteristics that shape a person, but rather what is happening in their heads. In other words: you elect someone to the Bundestag who represents your own political ideas – regardless of origin, skin color, gender or age.

Many club members may see things differently. And in terms of freedom of expression, that is their right. The federal government and other public institutions, on the other hand, must be asked why they support and promote an organization that has at least major difficulties in understanding the basic principles of representative democracy. After all, the Neue Deutsche Medienmacher advise German media. And they influence young journalists.

When asked whether the journalistic work of the Neue Deutsche Medienmacher ran the risk of losing its independence if it was funded to a large extent by public authorities, Vassiliou-Enz answered simply: the association was not active as a journalist. The Neue Deutsche Medienmacher are a non-profit initiative for more diversity in the media. At the press conference to present the “Diversity Guide”, whose author is Vassiliou-Enz, it sounded different: “We are not a diversity management agency,” said the managing director there, “we are journalists.”

By the way, the new manual is not for sale. Media houses can only get it if the respective editor-in-chief gives the association an hour to explain why diversity is a top priority. In return, it might be helpful for the New German Media Makers if they made the basic principles of representative democracy and journalistic independence a top priority.