Donald Trump — new US president and SAT 1’s symbolic figure for dangerous populism
After the dominant media coverage of Donald Trump and his election victory, the news media seem to have worked out a new method of integrating Trump into their report: even though one might get the impression that the news input coming from the White Trump House recently decreased a little bit, the television news programme SAT1 Nachrichten obviously insisted on showing the designated 45th president, although the report actually was not primarily about Trump, the election or the US.
Monday evening, 28 November. In its news programme the TV channel SAT1 is reporting about the increase of racist tirades of hate and sedition in Germany on the internet. In this context SAT1 shows bar graphs, Facebook examples and several interviews that comment on the appalling development. Suddenly, there he is again: Good old Donald. Before anyone could start missing him on the news programme, his orange face appeared on the TV screen again. The interesting aspect at this point is the voice over of the news commentator, who does not mention Trump explicitly. Nevertheless, everyone knows immediately what she is referring to when saying:
“Racist agitation definitely can be dangerous, especially when a populist starts leading such movements and loutish behavior becomes part of a political programme.“
Accompanied by this sentence we see a celebrated and victorious Donald Trump on stage, smiling and applauding. Well, SAT1 does not have to explain the connection between Trump and populism. Everyone knows about his highly controversial campaign, his racist and xenophobic insults as well as his sexist utterances. The TV channel obviously uses exactly this aspect by depicting the prospective president of the United States as a symbolic figure for dangerous populism (let us hope that the USA is not as proud of that fact as Trump himself probably is).
However, we can even go a step further when we say that the SAT1 news do not only emphasise once again that the 45th US president is not a man with a clean slate and who “offers the wrong solutions“, as our teacher Geoffrey once said. Furthermore, this news report is to be seen as a subliminal warning. It seems like the TV channel wants to say: “Be smarter than the US when it comes to elections in 2017 in Germany; Populism is dangerous, do not give it a chance in our country!“
But why did SAT1 chose Donald Trump and not Frauke Petry of the AfD, for example, in their report? Well, the answer is apparent: First, the AfD has not won the election yet, but Donald has. The consequences of populism are already officially visible in the USA and we should learn from it. Secondly, it is always easier to crticise from a, in this case local, distance. So the protests in our country against this symbolic use of Trump are most likely to be minor, which makes it much easier, of course, for the TV channel.
The last aspect to discuss is whether a news programme should take such a clear stand on political issues. In general most people expect the news media to report in a neutral, non-judgmental way. However, when we talk about things like racism, sedition, right-wing agitation and xenophobia, I think it is very important that the news media demonstrate their attitude against it. We are lucky to live in a democratic and free country, so it is absolutely necessary that the media share our constitution’s appreciation of human dignity and tolerance and the freedom of press should definitely be used used to fight for these values.
What would supporters of the AfD say about this? I don’t give a f***.
sat1.de/news/video
