Reply from the head of n-tv, Mr Demmel:
Dear Dr Adler, first of all I should like to thank you for your detailed feedback on our online service and for the accompanying comments on one of our articles. As a matter of principle I can assure you that n-tv attaches the greatest importance to always adopting a factual, neutral perspective in its reporting on the Middle East conflict across all our news services. With regard to the article you quote, I must concede that the headline was indeed unfortunately worded. Editorially, the intention was to show that there had been shelling by Hamas, which was followed by retaliatory strikes, and that these resulted in injuries and deaths. The apparent value judgement in the compressed headline was also noticed by our duty editor shortly after publication, and he immediately arranged for it to be changed. Moreover, the users of n-tv.de and our viewers know – not least from our detailed reporting from Gaza – how the word “demonstrators” is to be understood in the respective context. The article is therefore free of any partisanship and meets our journalistic standards. Yours sincerely, Hans Demmel, Managing Director. Many of our members and followers have drawn our attention to the repeatedly anti-Israeli headlines of n-tv items. We took two recent cases as an occasion to seek a conversation with the broadcaster. Here is our letter:n-tv online item of 9 August 2018 with the title:
“Outbreak of violence in the Middle East. Hamas fires, Israel’s retaliation kills”
Dear Mr Demmel, WerteInitiative e.V. is a political, non-profit association which has established itself as a civil-society Jewish voice in Germany. We work to strengthen the values of the free democratic basic order from a Jewish perspective. We do so by promoting values-based political, social and media discourse, civic Jewish engagement in Germany, and German-Israeli relations. Our activities focus on the subject areas of internal security, integration, the prevention of extremism, and the fight against antisemitism and xenophobia. In the course of our work we are in close contact with Dr Felix Klein, the Federal Government’s Commissioner for Antisemitism; we hold background discussions with Members of the Bundestag, other politicians and socially relevant actors; we issue public statements and recommendations; we are active on social media on current affairs; and we hold discussion rounds and political salons. We are also building a network based on civic education to strengthen democracy, to promote lasting civic engagement among young and old, and to foster interreligious exchange. It is therefore in the following matter that we turn to you today: during the evening and night of 8 to 9 August this year, the south of Israel was once again under sustained rocket fire from Hamas in Gaza. More than 150 rockets were fired that night at Israeli towns and villages, and thus also, without scruple, indiscriminately at civilians. Two people were injured when a rocket struck a residential building. Considerable material damage was caused, and tens of thousands of people spent the night in bunkers or stairwells. In order to put an end to this sustained fire, the Israeli air force carried out strikes that same night and attacked at least twelve terrorist targets, among them a factory producing cement and components for terror tunnels, a tunnel along the coast, a factory producing rockets, and further military installations. According to Hamas, two civilians regrettably also appear to have been killed in these strikes. You report on these events under the headline quoted above and sum them up as: “Hamas fires, Israel’s retaliation kills”.
This immediately suggests to the reader who the good and who the bad are. A value judgement is made in advance which imputes to the Israeli side a kind of intent to kill, while one may gain the impression that Hamas merely wants to play about with a bit of fire. After vehement protests on social media the headline was changed in a journalistically correct way. Dear Mr Demmel, you will be aware that, according to various studies of online reading behaviour, roughly 60 per cent of readers take in only the headline of a news item. Those readers who do take the time for the full text have already been “attuned” by this kind of headline and read the rest under its influence. And there are few subjects in which this “attunement” shows itself more clearly than in the Middle East conflict between Israelis and Palestinian groups. By now the ripple effects of such regularly recurring and one-sidedly judgemental headlines run so far through German society that Jewish institutions and Jewish people (!) are attacked almost daily, and people prefer not to recognise this as antisemitism, playing it down instead with the code words “anti-Zionism” or “criticism of Israel”. Of course a headline cannot sum up all the sequences of events, let alone their background. But it should surely be possible to attract a reader’s attention by proper journalistic means and thus to render events in the correct chronological order. For in the face of such headlines we cannot, unfortunately, escape the impression that those responsible for such headings are either unaware of the power of the media and the responsibility that goes with it, or are deliberately misusing it for the sake of higher click figures. This impression is reinforced by the n-tv online headline of 11 August 2018, which reads:
“Two dead in Gaza. Israel fires on demonstrators”
In Germany, the word “demonstrators” inevitably brings to mind candle-lit chains, placards and chanted slogans from people making their way from A to B in order to listen to some rally at the end of it. People who are generally demonstrating for the “right cause”. These are the demonstrations that are valued in Europe, and the right to hold them and to take part in them is one of the greatest achievements of democracy. That is the image a reader has in mind when reading such a headline. Yet it should be no secret that the “demonstrations” at the Gaza border fence proceed in an entirely different manner. That “demonstrators” there burn thousands of car tyres in order to give cover to those committing violence. That Israeli soldiers are fired on across the border. That “demonstrators” try to break through with all manner of implements; that Hamas calls for as many people as possible to be killed or abducted on the other side of the fence in order then to extort the release of terrorists imprisoned in Israel – all this is sufficiently well known. For the sake of completeness it should also be mentioned that these “demonstrators”, with the destruction of the State of Israel in their hearts, fly incendiary devices across the border which have already destroyed thousands of hectares of farmland and thus, together with the residues of the burnt car tyres, have led to an ecological disaster. That, unfortunately, is simply not the image that lodges in readers’ minds when a headline accuses Israel of firing on demonstrators just like that. We of course impute no ill will to the n-tv team. But it appears that a certain sensitivity is lacking to the effect of such headlines on the reader – with their consequences for the antisemitism that is sadly rising again in Germany and no longer hiding itself, and thus for the everyday lives of us Jews in Germany. Many Jewish Germans therefore wish us to seek an exchange with you. We should be glad to set out our experiences and our point of view in a conversation with you. We should also like, looking ahead, to discuss how articles labelled not as commentary but as reporting can better live up to a news broadcaster’s aspiration to deliver facts rather than opinions. We point out that we will communicate your reply publicly – unless you require otherwise of us. Personal contact details and signatures would be redacted in doing so.
