Coverage on the Attacks in Istanbul: RTL Aktuell vs. Tagesschau

In our last session, we had a discussion about the Tagesschau and about its composition. So I asked myself: Is there a difference between private and public channels and news in Germany? Do the values of these news differ?

In order to look at that, I watched RTL Aktuell (18:45) and the Tagesschau (20:00) on the 11th of December at their own “news prime time.” Both shows are relatively short, however, RTL Aktuell is nearly 5 minutes longer.

The both of them started with reports about the attacks in Turkey and even though some footage was the same, namely the funeral of the victims, the structure was entirely different.

RTL Aktuell started out with videos taken when and after the attack happened, whereas the Tagesschau aimed to explain firstly where the attacks took place and, therefore, provided a map:

These pictures show RTL’s interest in personalization. ARD, on the other hand, wants to express a certain objectivity in showing maps an being entirely accurate and appearing free of emotions.

After some pictures of ambulances on both channels, they continued with a statement of Erdogan. Even though it is recognizable that they took the same footage, they chose to focus on different quotations: Whereas RTL enforced Erdogan’s thought of vengeance, the Tagesschau rather focused on his will not to be kept down. Thus, they shape a different picture of the president. RTL shows him in rage, ARD more moderately but still decisive. Publishing these statements, the media can count on continuing to report on this matter and taking this footage into account as soon as he reacts in some way to the attacks. His reaction to come is, therefore, expected by the news and can be covered easily.

After this snippet, the Tagesschau continued showing the reporter and offering more information on their homepage. RTL, on the contrary, included a warning of the Federal Foreign Office and interviewed two Germans who were in Istanbul at that time. Moreover, they interviewed their specialist for the Near East, Antonia Rados, about consequences for tourism and violence in Islamic countries. This, again, applies to the value of personalization, as it answers the needs and demands of the “typical viewer” who wants to know if he is safe travelling there. ARD did not interview tourists or random people on the streets which is, again, a sign for its degree of institutionalization.