A constant struggle

"When a dog bites a man, that is not news." So goes the old journalists' saying. "If a man bites a dog, that is news."

Likewise, it's all in a day's work for reporters to take leading politicians to task. But when the head of the German state threatens to launch a "war" against the country's most-read daily, newsrooms understandably get worried.

Last month, German President Christian Wulff allegedly attempted to suppress a damaging report about his private loan affair by leaving a threatening voicemail message for Editor-in-Chief Kai Diekmann of the Bild daily. This past weekend the tabloid went public with that message, in which Wulff told the editor there would be "consequences" if the article went to press.

The scandal comes nearly a decade after another German daily, the left-leaning Tageszeitung, opened a wide debate over the influence of politicians on media reports.

In 2003, as chief reporter at Tageszeitung's parliamentary office in Berlin, Jens König conducted an interview with Social Democratic Party (SPD) politician Olaf Scholz, who at the time was the party's secretary general.

The SPD's press office requested the interview transcript for approval before publishing; a wish König granted. However, what he got back from Scholz's press officers was so heavily edited that the paper decided to protest: they ran the article, printing König's interview questions but blacking out the politician's redacted answers.

Media across Germany reported the case, with many journalists supporting the move to draw attention to what they see as obstructionism by politicians' press offices.

'Barbaric' editorial practices

But, according to Hans Leyendecker, editor of the Munich-based daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, the initiative could only have stood a chance "if all the media had stood together against running revised interviews."

"And you won't find that [kind of] alliance in Germany."

Leyendecker says that, while English-language papers tend to respect the validity of the spoken word, German media have steered toward the "barbarism" of allowing interviewees to have a say in changing quotations. "Even the questions generally become more clever in the process of editing – until the reader can only get his hands on a product of fabrication."

Tageszeitung politics editor Ulrike Winkelmann can also attest to regular experiences with politicians trying to exert control over the publication of their interviews - even employing dirty tricks if need be.

"I remember one union boss who really reversed his answers," she said. "We'd been told we would have authorization on the piece at midday, but we didn't get permission until the printing deadline - leaving us no choice but to run a deadly boring conversation that bore no resemblance to the recorded interview."

'Lacking transparency'

Although press freedom is guaranteed by German Basic Law, Hans-Joachim Fuhrmann of the German Association of Newspaper Publishers told Deutsche Welle that "transparency is lacking, especially when there's a case of political blunder."

While it is illegal in Germany to bar journalists from public events, that does not prevent politicians at press conferences from overtly ignoring questions from certain reporters - or answering questions in a way designed to reflect poorly on the journalists.

Former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's coalition government, for instance, "developed a certain mastery at making journalists look dumb," according to Winkelmann of the left-wing Tageszeitung.

"Closeness is often more difficult than distance," Winkelmann said. "When [Green Party politician] Jürgen Trittin gives us an interview, he revises it even more because he knows that his Green base will read it."

Buying silence

Another unfortunate reality is the financial consquences of reporting certain stories. Inflammatory financial reports, especially, can lead to lawsuits or the pulling of advertisements by angry sponsors.

"Big banks even send communications professionals and lawyers right into the main editorial office," according to Leyendecker.

In Berlin, one method of exercising press control is exclusion from so-called "background circles" - meetings between journalists and politicians that provide many opportunities to get a scoop but are not officially press conferences and therefore not legally open to any reporter.

According to Hendrik Zöner of the German Journalists' Association, Germany is about the middle of the road in terms of press freedom, compared to other European countries.

"In Scandinavian countries there is no authorization [required by interviewees for publication of an article]. In general there's much more openness.“

"At the other end of the scale," Zöner said, "are countries like Britain, France and Italy," where journalists develop relations to politics over the course of a full career.

'Politicians getting too chummy'

Jens König, whose 2003 interview in Tageszeitung opened up the debate over German press freedom from the red pens of politicians, sees the problem in the entangled relations between the country's polticial and media elite.

"The Bild newspaper first supported Wulff. He offered them photos and reports, and perhaps that saved him from damage when he divorced his first wife."

"I find this sort of chumminess much more problematic."

For König, who now reports for the magazine Stern, it's not Wulff's call in itself that is scandalous, but rather the president's assumption that his political title entitled him to have a say: "That's where you can see the - often close - connection between top politicians and well-known journalists and editors-in-chief."

König, Zöner, Leyendecker, and Winkelmann all agree on one thing: Since König's blacked-out interview was printed in 2003, the number of press officers in Germany has risen. According to König, so have the daily "skirmishes" between press and press officers over a few lines, right before deadline.

Author: Johanna Schmeller / dl
Editor: Andreas Illmer