Journalist Group Exasperated By Loose Cannon

Michael Hedges November 11, 2019 - Follow on Twitter

Journalist associations possess a certain cachet within the media sphere of many countries, certainly in Europe broadly. These groups weigh-in on relevant subjects from worker’s rights to copyrights. Generally, they represent member’s views, always ardent promoters of press freedom. Being ardent democrats (small d) they have meetings, debates, votes and issue position papers. But, like all activist organizations there can be disagreements.

People in Germany - and elsewhere - paused this past weekend to commemorate the penultimate change in the country since the end of World War 2 - the breach of the Berlin Wall between, more than symbolically, between West and East. On November 9th, 1989 people in the East streamed into the West to revel in the new openness while Westerners cautiously peered into the bleak reserves of their Eastern neighbors living in Brandenburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Thirty years later Easterners seem intent on slamming the door again. People living in Eastern German States have increasingly voted for far-right politicians, more sympathetic to the communist past but also, strangely, the Nazi era.

"If right-wing populists see the press as their enemy, then we take up this fight,” said recently re-elected German Journalists Association (Deutsche Journalisten-Verband - DJV) chairman Frank Überall, quoted by meedia.de (November 4). “Yes, I am in favor of the democratic system. Yes, I fight with passion for freedom of the press within this system."

The DJV is the largest journalist’s association in Europe, roughly 32,000 members. It recently celebrated its 70th anniversary. The DJV represents working journalists in all media as part professional association and part union. It is active in media policy issues, particularly press and media freedom. There are 16 State associations under the DJV umbrella.

Before May of this year there were 17 affiliates, one each for the 16 German Federal States, including DJV Brandenburg, and one based in the Berlin city-state, DJV Berlin. DJV Brandenburg and the national federation DJV have been at odds for 15 years on various issues and recently parted ways. Unable to effectively control DJV Brandenburg, the DJV formed a new affiliate, JVBB, Journalist Association Berlin Brandenburg. The remnants of DJV Brandenburg, divorced from the federal DJV, renamed itself DJV Berlin-Brandenburg while DJV Berlin members voted to fold itself into the newly formed JVBB.

There is also the German Union for Journalists (Deutsche Journalisten und Journalistinnen Union - DJU/Verdi), a more traditional union organized under the German Trade Union Confederation. It is also affiliated with the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). The DJU absorbed members of the GDR Journalists Association (VJD) between 1990 and 1991. It largely represented newspaper journalists until 2007 when the German Trade Confederation absorbed into it unions representing broadcasting, film and audiovisual workers.

Being, as we are, in the digital age, disagreements tend to play out on social media. Not long ago the DJV BB social media feed complained of German schools being “ideologically contaminated” by “leftist and green teachers” to “indoctrinate” students, reported Süddeutsche Zeitung (October 23). Many took that as implicit endorsement by DJV BB chairman Klaus Minhardt of the views of the extreme far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) political party, which recently made gains in recent eastern state elections.

Herr Minhardt drew a few headlines in 2016 raging about news coverage of AfD deputy Alexander Gauland disparaging Bayern Munich star Jerome Boateng, quoted in Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAS) (May 28, 2016) saying“people like him as a football player. But they don’t want to have a Boateng as their neighbour.” FAS reporters then took the story to the next step, interviewing Boateng’s neighbors who found the footballer “very nice and down-to-earth.” This set-off Herr Minhardt, expressing that FAS and other German newspapers were “lying press.”

"The fact that a representative of the DJV Brandenburg expresses himself publicly as if he belonged to the AfD fan club, testifies to little journalistic expertise," noted Federal DJV spokesperson Hendrik Zörner, quoted by meedia.de (June 6, 2016).

“As an umbrella organization we have no influence” over the DJV BB, said a Federal DJV spokesperson also on social media. "We have distanced ourselves countless times from the (DJV BB) and do so again on the occasion of the recent derailments.” The Federal DJV appealed to the courts to expel DJV BB in 2016 and lost the case. Hence, they’re stuck.

Perhaps realizing he may have over-stepped, shortly thereafter Herr Minhardt returned to social media. "By the way, we have nothing against left or green teachers. But as soon as they violate the principle of neutrality and influence the students, that is a problem that must be solved. For journalists, it is said, the same applies.”

See also...

• Hot Topics - Media in Germany

• Hot Topics - Journalist Associations and Unions

• Hot Topics - Press/Media Freedom