by Peter Löcke //
News is finally available in plain language. Exclusively for people who need inclusive care. Here is the original pilot program [1]. ARD had previously announced the new TV format in a statement on its own behalf [2]. It states:
"Around 17 million adults in Germany have problems understanding complex texts. So that they too can find out about current topics, tagesschau is now broadcasting television news in plain language."
I have adopted the incorrect capitalization in at least two places in the ARD report. Reactions to the new format have been mixed. It's a great sign of inclusion. It's a way of getting people with a low level of education interested in political issues. Some say. It's like the "Sendung mit der Maus" for adults and, like the original "Tagesschau", only spreads government narratives. Criticize the others. That was my spontaneous, amused reaction. Accordingly, I happily announced to the editor of this platform via WhatsApp that the new column would be a gloss. Markus Langemann still has to wait for this commentary. They all ended up in the digital garbage can. On closer inspection, a gloss does not do justice to the topic, because the subject is very serious. At the end of the day, it's about dumbing down the people. It's about infantilization and infantilization is a stylistic device of propaganda. This dangerous phenomenon is not limited to the new Tagesschau. It has been a recurring theme in science, politics and the media for several years now. I will stay with the media landscape and the new format mentioned at the beginning.
Sapere aude! Think for yourself? No. You should not think for yourself. Cogito ergo sum! I think, therefore I am? Nonsense. That should be avoided. The new slogan is "Incognitive ergo stupid!" The public broadcaster considers 17 million people, i.e. a quarter of the adult population, to be mentally underdeveloped. Politics must be explained to this target group in simple, short, slowly spoken sentences. Explain, mind you. Not inform. For the ÖRR, news is called news so that viewers follow it. Tilo Jung admitted this self-image of journalism remarkably openly at "re:publica2024" [3]. What is important to Tilo Jung is not what 83 million people are interested in. What is important is what 83 million people are interested in. Citizens should be picked up and taken by the hand. Further evidence of this educational hubris of the leading media can be found on X, formerly Twitter. Every NDR contribution is currently being mockingly acknowledged with yawn emojis. This reaction from X users has a history. When a viewer complained to NDR about why they weren't reporting on rape and knifemen, NDR responded with a bored yawn [4]. Norddeutscher Rundfunk doesn't give a damn what viewers want or don't want. NDR finds the viewer's wishes boring and yawning. The social media team's behavior was to be reviewed internally, they said. And thus the smooth transition to politics.
Work up! We will work through this internally. That's what they reliably say in the TV elephant rounds on every election night. So, after the disappointing result of the European elections for the SPD and the Greens, the party leaders promised an internal review in which every stone would be turned over. As a politically interested person, there is no need to wait for the result of this reappraisal. The result is reliable: our policies are outstanding. We just need to communicate them better! As with the leading media, the subtext of the message is one's own hubris and disdain for the citizen. In other words:
Citizens are simply too stupid to recognize the excellent policies of the traffic lights. We vow to do better. From now on, we will explain our greatness better.
It could be worse. The sum of all citizens is society. The sum of hubris and megalomania has a name. Robert Habeck. He has said in the past that he sees it as his job to explain politics. But this time he has, in his own words, "gone too far" [5]. He had gone too far with the heating law. It was all just a test of how far society had already come. This kind of thinking reminds me of a father who removes the training wheels from his bicycle for the first time to find out whether his three-year-old child can manage without help. But society is not a three-year-old child. The adult citizen wants to be treated as an adult. By the media, by politics, by science. By science, too.
Eckart von Hirschhausen, Harald Lesch, MaiLab, Christian Drosten, Volker Quaschning and co - these are just a few of the science pop stars courted by the media. They have all been showered with prizes and awards. If you read through one or two of the laudatory speeches, you will find a recurring element. It is simple language. The award winners are praised for their ability to explain complex issues to the public in simple terms. I think that's a fallacy. The flowery communication of knowledge is usually infantile popular stupidity. In concrete terms? A new virus variant cannot be compared with a muddy sandy path and the tires and horsepower of a car. This is exactly what the pope of virology has done [6]. Hirschhausen compared the human brain to a breakfast egg that is overcooked in times of climate change. The "enlightening" videos of Volker Quaschning are edited MTV-style. MailLab dances science in a duet with Caroline Kebekus in "Science is mine" [7]. The public is not enlightened here. They are only supposed to feel enlightened. All of this is popular stupidity on an infantile level. Target group 83 million people. The reason is psychological. If you treat adults like small children, they become conditioned. Then, at some point, they also behave like small children. Then they become uncritical and obedient and follow the instructions of mom and dad.
Speaking of Mutti. Why was Angela Merkel called "Mummy of the Nation"? Presumably they wanted to express that the Chancellor cares for her people. Merkel cared for her children as the nation's mother. But they are not her children. They are adult, responsible citizens. And they don't need any protective measures. To be fair, Merkel rarely spoke of citizens. She was talking about the people in the country. Why did Merkel do that? This is not the Tagesschau. Sapere aude!
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2 Responses
"They are adult, responsible citizens." Hmm. That was always my argument with Corona, Ukraine, Russia, the economy, energy security, migrant invasion, etc. So the objection that you should ask the sovereign what he thinks of this policy. But from a sober point of view, the sovereign doesn't want to be bothered with these questions. They don't care about anything outside their personal environment. He or she considers themselves to be overwhelmed even in 'simple language'. If we subtract the 17 million people categorized by ARD as mentally maladjusted from the 85 million with residual understanding, that leaves 68 million. That's roughly the number of people who believe pretty much any bullshit. The tsunami that destroys German nuclear power plants, that Islamists from archaic cultures are creating a German economic miracle 2.0, that with Faeser, Haldenwang, Habeck and their ilk we don't actually have a sham democracy, that the WHO is not run by a misanthropic driver of genocide. that the 'modRNA' has saved millions of lives, that Ukraine is not a mafia-like, fascist corrupt state that has turned the spiral of escalation until it cracks, that the fight against the right is the last stage of anti-fascist bliss, that there is no competition between those receiving citizen's money and those who do not. There is no competition between Ukrainians on the food bank receiving citizen's money, fed with mafia money, and German pensioners with a mini-pension, that elections are superfluous with a state that makes no mistakes, and last but not least that it is the Greens who are saving the whole world by the grace of God. So it's not primarily about throwing a summa cum laude after the 68 million who are particularly well-off, but about signaling to the 17 million that they are out of society 2.0. It's part of the selection that has been carried out in the media and politically since Merkel. I count myself among these 17 million, if only because I have not been vaccinated and have only taken a PCR test once. This fact alone means that the big-heads in the institutions have to make fun of me in some way. A dialogue with me is not possible because I argue in a narrative, differentiating and analyzing way. ARD therefore interprets my attitude failure as analphetism. Even the proof that I can halfway read and write, even in several languages, does not release me from the club of 17 million. Clearly, I am one of those who have not been given the multiple enlightenments and interpretation aids of either the Wumms, the Doppel-Wumms, the Bazooka or the Good-Kita-Law. In the left-wing universe, I am the stupid one. But, and that's the goal, ARD helps me to categorize myself in a society that, the more primitive, simple-minded, uncritical and moronic it behaves, the happier it becomes. As Nietzsche said. Only the insane and small children are happy.
"Television is the dumbing down of the people" 1974 Original quote by Dr. Nawitzki, an elderly biology teacher who had attracted the attention of the Gestapo when he was young. Fortunately, nothing happened to him back then. As in the thousand-year Reich, shortened to twelve years, he recognized the disinformation spread by the state in 1974. At the time, there was so much hate speech in the media against entrepreneurs (exploiters, etc.) that we no longer dared to say at grammar school that our parents had a company with sixty employees. Reporting on the Vietnam War or extremely subsidized nuclear power were further inglorious examples. Whenever I get upset about something out there, my wife always says it's nothing new, we've been through this before and, as is almost always the case, she's right. In our constituency in tranquil Lower Saxony, the AfD is on a par with the CDU and the Wagenknechte have established themselves right away, the youth is good for an absolute majority for the AfD. We can either like that or not. Tomasi di Lampedusa had Herzog say in his novel "The Leopard": "Everything has to change so that things can stay the way they are." There's probably something to that.