5 ms·

The NSA, Germany, and journalism

101 points by phreeza 13y ago

terhechte 13y ago
I can confirm this, even my 65 year old mom, who can barely use her iPad to Facebook started talking about this and was worried. And among the people aged Gen-Y, this is a huge and important topic. Understandably, my worldview is totally skewed: I consume HN, Guardian, and German media.. In my little world, literally every site I visit and person I know talks about NSA/Prism/UK. It is weird feeling, then, visiting other media
- hyperventilator 13y ago
  Do you not beleive the Germans are in on it?
  - sgift 13y ago
    Do you mean the German government is in on the NSA spying? Certainly, they are in. The BND(1) is currently trying to state that it didn't know anything about the NSA practices _and_ delivered data to the NSA at the same time. So, they are either incompetent or lie to us. Take your pick. And the government is stating every day that everything is known by now, the NSA didn't do anything wrong and we should stop asking so much questions. (1) The Bundesnachrichtendienst is the German foreign intelligence agency. A mix of NSA/CIA.
  - petera 13y ago
    If the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Sueddeutsche Zeitung are on it, the Spiegel has to be on it too. Bildzeitung will try to spin it down, like the chancellor tries to play that topic down. Every incident related to Snowden, NSA, intelligence agencies or the violation of rights in europe will fuel the whole discussion again and again.
- petera 13y ago
  If you are somehow in a german nerdsphere, the whole Snowden, NSA affair is really a big topic. Best way to explain is, the older german generation feels betrayed by their former allies and the younger generation is really scared about the impact of global surveillance.
- digitalengineer 13y ago
  I salute the German public for their awareness. I'm in the country next door (Holland) and most of my fellow men act like it's no big deal. They keep steamrolling new privacy-violating laws. (Today:'Supervision by drones has expanded' Municipalities may soon get the power to use their own drones, TomTom sells traffic/speed data to cops, talks of RFID in licenplates and what not).
  - michielvoo 13y ago
    It was on the front page of NRC.next (with a two-page spread inside), a morning newspaper here in Holland.
spdy 13y ago
And the moment you enter the world of main stream media. This topic vanish into thin air and does not exist at all. As many respectable people said so far all western countries are in a post democratic state.
Systemic33 13y ago
I can't help to feel quite disappointed about the lack of integrity in modern media. It used to be the tool with which governments were torn down with, and ruthlessly skinning the politics to the bone. Nowadays, it's more of a indirectly controlled propaganda machine, only with an interest in bottom-line profit, and pleasing the people above you. The HBO tv-series 'The Newsroom' seems incredibly accurate, and relevant to the lacking quality of the media. To the point where i'd wish Will McAvoy was real.
- hyperventilator 13y ago
  There is no need for conspiracy, if media companies thought they could sell more advertisements you can be goddamn sure they would. They'll print anything to sell papers. The demographic really interested in the details of this are probably not who they are selling ads to.
  - Systemic33 13y ago
    It really isn't a conspiracy anymore. It's more like a statement of fact. Media in the traditional sense, just pure and simple, isn't what it used to be in more than one way. Maybe it's the people tweeting the news instead of articles that change governements now (not that i'd want that, but meant as in the expression). I'm pretty certain the watergate scandal would never have ended the way it did, if it happened in 2013. It would just be dusted under the rug, and a retroactive law passed through to legalize the offense.
    - hyperventilator 13y ago
      This story os everywhere BBC, NYT etc. Pretending there is a media blackout undermines credibility.
      - iaskwhy 13y ago
        BBC has been very silent about all this compared to some other UK media.
sveme 13y ago
A micro statistic (in the languages I can somewhat understand): On which rank is any NSA/Prism?Snowden story currently on the websites, where rank is either "most read" or "most commented"? sueddeutsche.de: no. 1 lemonde.fr: no. 3 spiegel.de: no.2 nytimes.com -most emailed: outside of top20 -most blogged: no. 1 -most viewed: outside of top20 washingtonpost.com: outside top5 foxnews.com: outside top5 usatoday.com: outside top5 latimes.com: outside top10 www.telegraph.co.uk -most viewed: no. 1 -most shared: no. 10 -most commented: outside top10 Dagens Nyheter: no. 6 Berlingske: outside top5 NZZ.ch -most read: no. 1 -most commented: outside top10 -most recommended: no. 8 Sydney Morning Herald: outside top5 ------------------------------ Not really a scientific endeavour, but might provide some additional data points. I should probably do that more systematically when the next story hits. Maybe someone that knows some Eastern European, Asian or South American newspapers could add their data points, then we might be able to identify some trends. It indeed looks like the anglosaxons are more interested in other stuff. (edit: changed some formatting)
mikegagnon 13y ago
I am surprised the author did not discuss Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model I believe it accurately predicts mass media's biases in this situation. The propaganda model says that propaganda is an emergent phenomenon in democratic societies. Similar to how macro ant-colony behavior emerges when individual ants follow simple pheremonal rules --- propaganda emerges when journalists, managers, PR agents, government officials, etc. each optimize for their local objective functions. The relationships between all the agents in the system are complex, but ultimately, according to the propaganda model, mass media's incentives align with business and government incentives.
- einhverfr 13y ago
  >The propaganda model says that propaganda is an emergent phenomenon in democratic societies. This looks like almost exactly what Hilaire Belloc proposed in his 1918 book "The Free Press."
  - mikegagnon 13y ago
    I just read a review for "The Free Press." http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/18/opinion/18tue4.html http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/18/opinion/18tue4.html To me it seems like they share some commonalities, but also have significant differences. Belloc's main thesis seems to be that the Mass Media is "the true governing power in the political machinery of the State, superior to the officials in the State, nominating ministers and dismissing them, imposing policies, and, in general, usurping sovereignty — all this secretly and without responsibility." I believe Manufacturing Consent somewhat agrees with that thesis, but Manufacturing Consent goes further by explaining how business interests align with mass media and government, and how it results in propaganda. I haven't read "The Free Press" so perhaps there are greater similarities than what I could glean from the short NYT book review. After all, both "The Free Press" and the Propaganda Model predict that NYT aren't incentivized to give a fair review of "The Free Press."
nwzpaperman 13y ago
Edward Bernays wasn't paid for nothing! Contemporary society is a mess because we institutionalized the legitimacy of a voice in the form of for-profit journalists. Has anyone considered how long the journalist career has existed in its recent history form? Before Guttenberg did we have for-profit journalists? I will indulge semantics here, but I suspect no one will argue that organized society existed for a long time before we delegitimized the primary sources of information--the person a journalist investigates--to legitimize professional secondary and tertiary sources of information(aka journalists). In other words, complaining about the evolution of public information dissemination is utterly fruitless as it isn't actionable. I've made the bet that most career journalists are already marginalized and that the common person is and will continue to marginalize the career journalist and the institutions that legitimize them. Primary sources disseminating public information if the future. You are the journalist now!
- petera 13y ago
  s/journalist/editor/g
  - nwzpaperman 13y ago
    The individual certainly takes on more of those responsibilities today, but the community has a lot of input on the process that they didn't have before.
petera 13y ago
The article forgets to mention it is close to the Bundestagswahl (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_2013 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_2013), on September 22nd. Some major news outlets confront the german government open in a very aggressive way, especially when it comes to intelligence agencies, and how the chancellor tries to play the problems down. The freedom of press which is part if the german grundrecht (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law_for_the_Federal_Republic_of_Germany http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law_for_the_Federal_Repub...) would be violated in very harsh way, if something like the guardian story would happen in germany. It adds fuel to the whole discussion how the uk and us treat their citizens and their allies. Just for the record, the german government disapproves the usage of windows 8 for government usage, and has approved bitcoin as an currency-derivative.
petera 13y ago
A different, very cynic approach would be that germany had a history of involving journalism into politics and the uk and the us trying to have it exactly that way nowadays. Germany achieved it once with Gleichschaltung (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung) and the us seem to achieve similar results with it's 9/11 nationalism and advertising.

101 points by phreeza 13y ago

I can confirm this, even my 65 year old mom, who can barely use her iPad to Facebook started talking about this and was worried. And among the people aged Gen-Y, this is a huge and important topic. Understandably, my worldview is totally skewed: I consume HN, Guardian, and German media.. In my little world, literally every site I visit and person I know talks about NSA/Prism/UK. It is weird feeling, then, visiting other media

hyperventilator 13y ago
Do you not beleive the Germans are in on it?
- sgift 13y ago
  Do you mean the German government is in on the NSA spying? Certainly, they are in. The BND(1) is currently trying to state that it didn't know anything about the NSA practices _and_ delivered data to the NSA at the same time. So, they are either incompetent or lie to us. Take your pick. And the government is stating every day that everything is known by now, the NSA didn't do anything wrong and we should stop asking so much questions. (1) The Bundesnachrichtendienst is the German foreign intelligence agency. A mix of NSA/CIA.
- petera 13y ago
  If the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Sueddeutsche Zeitung are on it, the Spiegel has to be on it too. Bildzeitung will try to spin it down, like the chancellor tries to play that topic down. Every incident related to Snowden, NSA, intelligence agencies or the violation of rights in europe will fuel the whole discussion again and again.
petera 13y ago
If you are somehow in a german nerdsphere, the whole Snowden, NSA affair is really a big topic. Best way to explain is, the older german generation feels betrayed by their former allies and the younger generation is really scared about the impact of global surveillance.
digitalengineer 13y ago
I salute the German public for their awareness. I'm in the country next door (Holland) and most of my fellow men act like it's no big deal. They keep steamrolling new privacy-violating laws. (Today:'Supervision by drones has expanded' Municipalities may soon get the power to use their own drones, TomTom sells traffic/speed data to cops, talks of RFID in licenplates and what not).
- michielvoo 13y ago
  It was on the front page of NRC.next (with a two-page spread inside), a morning newspaper here in Holland.

spdy 13y ago

And the moment you enter the world of main stream media. This topic vanish into thin air and does not exist at all. As many respectable people said so far all western countries are in a post democratic state.

Systemic33 13y ago

I can't help to feel quite disappointed about the lack of integrity in modern media. It used to be the tool with which governments were torn down with, and ruthlessly skinning the politics to the bone. Nowadays, it's more of a indirectly controlled propaganda machine, only with an interest in bottom-line profit, and pleasing the people above you. The HBO tv-series 'The Newsroom' seems incredibly accurate, and relevant to the lacking quality of the media. To the point where i'd wish Will McAvoy was real.

hyperventilator 13y ago
There is no need for conspiracy, if media companies thought they could sell more advertisements you can be goddamn sure they would. They'll print anything to sell papers. The demographic really interested in the details of this are probably not who they are selling ads to.
- Systemic33 13y ago
  It really isn't a conspiracy anymore. It's more like a statement of fact. Media in the traditional sense, just pure and simple, isn't what it used to be in more than one way. Maybe it's the people tweeting the news instead of articles that change governements now (not that i'd want that, but meant as in the expression). I'm pretty certain the watergate scandal would never have ended the way it did, if it happened in 2013. It would just be dusted under the rug, and a retroactive law passed through to legalize the offense.
  - hyperventilator 13y ago
    This story os everywhere BBC, NYT etc. Pretending there is a media blackout undermines credibility.
    - iaskwhy 13y ago
      BBC has been very silent about all this compared to some other UK media.

sveme 13y ago

A micro statistic (in the languages I can somewhat understand): On which rank is any NSA/Prism?Snowden story currently on the websites, where rank is either "most read" or "most commented"? sueddeutsche.de: no. 1 lemonde.fr: no. 3 spiegel.de: no.2 nytimes.com -most emailed: outside of top20 -most blogged: no. 1 -most viewed: outside of top20 washingtonpost.com: outside top5 foxnews.com: outside top5 usatoday.com: outside top5 latimes.com: outside top10 www.telegraph.co.uk -most viewed: no. 1 -most shared: no. 10 -most commented: outside top10 Dagens Nyheter: no. 6 Berlingske: outside top5 NZZ.ch -most read: no. 1 -most commented: outside top10 -most recommended: no. 8 Sydney Morning Herald: outside top5 ------------------------------ Not really a scientific endeavour, but might provide some additional data points. I should probably do that more systematically when the next story hits. Maybe someone that knows some Eastern European, Asian or South American newspapers could add their data points, then we might be able to identify some trends. It indeed looks like the anglosaxons are more interested in other stuff. (edit: changed some formatting)

mikegagnon 13y ago

I am surprised the author did not discuss Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model I believe it accurately predicts mass media's biases in this situation. The propaganda model says that propaganda is an emergent phenomenon in democratic societies. Similar to how macro ant-colony behavior emerges when individual ants follow simple pheremonal rules --- propaganda emerges when journalists, managers, PR agents, government officials, etc. each optimize for their local objective functions. The relationships between all the agents in the system are complex, but ultimately, according to the propaganda model, mass media's incentives align with business and government incentives.

einhverfr 13y ago
>The propaganda model says that propaganda is an emergent phenomenon in democratic societies. This looks like almost exactly what Hilaire Belloc proposed in his 1918 book "The Free Press."
- mikegagnon 13y ago
  I just read a review for "The Free Press." http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/18/opinion/18tue4.html http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/18/opinion/18tue4.html To me it seems like they share some commonalities, but also have significant differences. Belloc's main thesis seems to be that the Mass Media is "the true governing power in the political machinery of the State, superior to the officials in the State, nominating ministers and dismissing them, imposing policies, and, in general, usurping sovereignty — all this secretly and without responsibility." I believe Manufacturing Consent somewhat agrees with that thesis, but Manufacturing Consent goes further by explaining how business interests align with mass media and government, and how it results in propaganda. I haven't read "The Free Press" so perhaps there are greater similarities than what I could glean from the short NYT book review. After all, both "The Free Press" and the Propaganda Model predict that NYT aren't incentivized to give a fair review of "The Free Press."

nwzpaperman 13y ago

Edward Bernays wasn't paid for nothing! Contemporary society is a mess because we institutionalized the legitimacy of a voice in the form of for-profit journalists. Has anyone considered how long the journalist career has existed in its recent history form? Before Guttenberg did we have for-profit journalists? I will indulge semantics here, but I suspect no one will argue that organized society existed for a long time before we delegitimized the primary sources of information--the person a journalist investigates--to legitimize professional secondary and tertiary sources of information(aka journalists). In other words, complaining about the evolution of public information dissemination is utterly fruitless as it isn't actionable. I've made the bet that most career journalists are already marginalized and that the common person is and will continue to marginalize the career journalist and the institutions that legitimize them. Primary sources disseminating public information if the future. You are the journalist now!

petera 13y ago
s/journalist/editor/g
- nwzpaperman 13y ago
  The individual certainly takes on more of those responsibilities today, but the community has a lot of input on the process that they didn't have before.

petera 13y ago

The article forgets to mention it is close to the Bundestagswahl (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_2013 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_2013), on September 22nd. Some major news outlets confront the german government open in a very aggressive way, especially when it comes to intelligence agencies, and how the chancellor tries to play the problems down. The freedom of press which is part if the german grundrecht (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law_for_the_Federal_Republic_of_Germany http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law_for_the_Federal_Repub...) would be violated in very harsh way, if something like the guardian story would happen in germany. It adds fuel to the whole discussion how the uk and us treat their citizens and their allies. Just for the record, the german government disapproves the usage of windows 8 for government usage, and has approved bitcoin as an currency-derivative.

petera 13y ago

A different, very cynic approach would be that germany had a history of involving journalism into politics and the uk and the us trying to have it exactly that way nowadays. Germany achieved it once with Gleichschaltung (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung) and the us seem to achieve similar results with it's 9/11 nationalism and advertising.