I disagree with blaming the internet. These forms of schmalz the journalist at hand fed his employer also fed into a cherished world-view. Cherished by co-work

I disagree with blaming the internet. These forms of schmalz the journalist at hand fed his employer also fed into a cherished world-view. Cherished by co-workers and by the dozens or so jurors and organizations that plastered him with awards. All of this happened before the dominance of internet in German journalism as well. But most importantly, you don't need the internet present for those things to happen. What you need is a deep bias. e.g. at Der Spiegel - a left-leaning political stance is commonly held; in 1987 they in a successful attempt to derail the campaign of an conservative politician, stirred up what became to be known as the Barschel-Affair [1]. It ended with the suicide of the conservative politician and the social democratic successor stepping down a couple of years later, when in the affair's aftermath his own corrupt doings were laid bare. - From 2000-2007, when the "national socialist underground" committed their serial-killings against immigrants (and a police officer) Der Spiegel was at the forefront portraying them as "Döner-Murders"; that the killings were all part of the inner workings of the Turkish mafia. - an "Israel critical" stance is somewhat commonly held; in 2010 you could get away with articles with complete made up facts about orthodox jews in Jerusalem (hint: bad people that don't use cell-phones etc.) [2] - In 2016 a court ordered Der Spiegel to redact 14 claims it made against an investigative journalist [3] and subsequently agreed to redact the whole piece. - In 2018 at another publication, Die Zeit, in a prime example of biasedness, its editors-in-chief publicly smeared one of their own inhouse journalists after she in one of her articles dared to pose the question whether the NGOs cruising the Mediterranean Sea to rescue refugees were always helpful or whether they might increase the human toll after all (since smugglers counting on those NGOs to pick up "their slack" started to massively lower the quality of vessels used to transport the refugees) [4] [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barschel-Aff%C3%A4re#Berichte_des_%E2%80%9ESpiegel%E2%80%9C https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barschel-Aff%C3%A4re#Berichte_... [2] http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/ultraorthodoxe-juden-mayans-flucht-aus-dem-mittelalter-a-675622.html http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/ultraorthodoxe-juden-m... [3] https://www.ksta.de/kultur/rechtsstreit-um--schmaehartikel--der--spiegel--loescht-text-zu-juergen-todenhoefer-24671104 https://www.ksta.de/kultur/rechtsstreit-um--schmaehartikel--... [4] http://schmid.welt.de/2018/07/19/liberalitas-hammoniae-die-zeit-und-die-meinungsfreiheit/ http://schmid.welt.de/2018/07/19/liberalitas-hammoniae-die-z...