You should really “Bild dir deine Meinung”.
On the impossibility of telling the plain truth
Today morning it caught my eye: „DIE GANZE WAHRHEIT ÜBER FLÜCHTLINGE!“. Plain white capital letters, highlighted on dark ground, underlined red. Every German could tell at first sight which newspaper offers such a kind of lurid headlines. For decades, the German BILD-Zeitung is criticised because of it’s way of reporting and it’s influence on people‘s opinions. However, it still is the newspaper with the widest circulation and the largest readership in Germany.
I’m just wondering: Don’t we all know by now that BILD is all about headlines, spreading populist opinions and stirring up hatred against some imaginary bogeyman, all flavoured with a bit of sex and a bit of eye candy here and there?
Obviously not. But one really has to ask why. For sure, the journalists working for BILD-Zeitung really know how to wrap up a difficult, demanding topic in a few, striking sentences. This is also the reason why most people source their news from social-media platforms nowadays, where it works the same way in most cases. Most people prefer that kind of stream of information, where one gets a maximum of content in a minimum of time. Sure, for producers and readers, it is the easiest way. But have you ever noticed that this also functions the same way, some propagandist parties are spreading their thinking so efficiently? Exactly, by offering short and convenient solutions and paroles. I guess that is exactly the strength of those articles, but of course, also the weak point.
You simply can not condense a vast and highly complex topic such as the refugee issue in one sentence, not even in one article, not even in one bloody magazine. Sorry, you can’t. Get over it. You can not talk about „DIE FLÜCHTLINGE“ when there’s a whole lot of them, anyone with a different background, a different story, a different personality. And you sure as hell can not claim to be able to tell the „GANZE WAHRHEIT“, the plain truth, about all this, while sitting in your office cube in Berlin sipping some sugared coffee.
I think sometimes we have to face the fact, which is obvious actually, that some things in this world aren’t easily understandable, handled and investigated within a few weeks. For some things, it is not enough to read an article in your favourite newspaper and therefore be absolutely up to date. It requires research, criticism, a variety of media to catch a more differentiated glimpse of what’s truely going on. But most of all, it requires confrontation. Direct contact to said people in real life, confronting ourselves with the actual circumstances, to see it for ourselves and to see the bigger picture. That’s tough. But that’s life.
„Bild dir deine Meinung“: But in another way as they recommend you to do so.
