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08.Aug.2001 15:41 |
Migrants and the Mass Media
author: Christoph Butterwege
 e-mail: mbatko@mailcity.com
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Christoph Butterwege exposes the intellectual, institutional and individual racism practiced by the media when they stylize migrants as threats and routinely ignore their positive contribution.
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Migrants and the Mass Media
By Christoph Butterwege
[This article is translated abridged from the German on the World Wide Web. Christoph Butterwege is a professor of political science in Germany.]
To explain legal developments in united Germany, the media which serve as a connecting link between institutional (structural, governmental), intellectual (pseudo-scientific) and individual or everyday racism must be closely examined. In relation to racism, the mass media can be viewed as a kind of fourth authority since they shape political culture and have enormous influence on the dominant discourse, thought, engagements and conduct of many people. In this sense, we could speak of a hinge-function. Special laws for and arbitrary state measures against foreigners are enacted which could be called "institutional racism". "Normal German citizens" are identified by the mass media and cited to conform cliché ideas about foreigners. Conversely the state uses the resentment towards foreigners diffused through the media to structurally disadvantage them. Finally, racism draped pseudo-scientifically is given a public forum by the media which explains its mass effectiveness regardless of whether the conclusions of cultural anthropology, ethnology, socio-biology or the ideology of a modernized rightwing extremism like"ethno-pluralism" is underlined.
1. The Media as Socialization Authority, Mediator and Multiplier of (Cultural) Racism
Modern communication media, especially the television, has been advancing for a long time in the field of early child socialization. Since less and less time to care for children is left for employed parents owing to their double burden, constantly increasing pressure for results and increasing repression competition in the labor- and housing markets, the media fulfill an education task alongside their entertainment function in the life of rising generations.
Within the very diverse media landscape, British sociologist Stuart Hall distinguishes between "explicit" and "implicit" racism in the media according to whether the arguments of the extreme rightwing are propagated openly or whether (cultural) racist premises of anthropology, ethnology, psycho- and socio-biology enter in the representation as unquestionable principles. (Neo-) rightwing journalism whose influence increases, established information media and multipliers often transport such ideologies in the heads of citizens without their awareness. Hall names television as an example where the increasing number of refugees is regarded as a cause of problems...
Ethnology and socio-biology transcribe the conduct of animals to people... . By means of such bold analogies, racism is declared `normality' although there is nothing comparable in the animal kingdom. That people have the possibility of dealing rationally with their aggressions is consistently ignored... Fear of the foreign and hostility to foreigners appear unjustly as "natural", innate and genetically conditioned. Thus racist acts of violence are not explained but trivialized, whitewashed and excused.
1.1 How Migrants are made into "Foreigners":
Foreigners, Immigrants and Refugees in the German Media
The media influences the mass consciousness and the genesis/ development of everyday racism. It filters important information for individual opinion and in this way affects the awareness of people whose reality is increasingly opened up by the media. For example, while reporting about causes of flight and their backgrounds (from the unjust worldwide economic order and exploitation practices of mammoth industrial corporations and eco-colonialism to weapons exports of "our" armament industry) is more than deficient, reporting from the so-called third world treat mainly wars and civil wars, natural- and techno-disasters, palace revolutions and military coups. The prejudice is apparently confirmed that "Africans", "Asians", and "South Americans" are beneficiaries of western civilization and the most modern technologies but incapable of democratic self-management. The dominance feeling of frustrated colonial masters is primary.
In advertising, exoticism and misery aesthetics, romantic fantasies and horror scenes alternate. The German mass media reproduce euro- or ethnocentrism and transport resentment towards the other. In his analysis of current ideas about foreign peoples, nations and continents, Bernhard Claussen (1990) concluded that the majority of the mass media rely on a broad diffusion of ethnocentric expressed and unexpressed cliches, stereotypes and prejudices.
The German media report about the seven million foreigners in Germany as they report about foreign countries, focusing only on exceptional cases with spectacular and catastrophic characteristics. Foreigners are associated with disorder, violence and chaos.
No culture need be foreign any more to the inhabitant in Central Europe in the age of modern information-, communication- and transportation technologies and western mass tourism. However very specific groups of foreigners are regarded as alien while others are welcome guests. The media solidify this hierarchy formed in the everyday consciousness of the citizen through their way of reporting about foreigners, refugees and immigrants. Analysis of the content of the daily press shows that journalists clearly differentiate between different groups. Foreigners who stay in Germany as tourists, artists or athletes are accepted or even courted. The judgment is different when foreigners work or seek asylum in Germany. This dualism is more pronounced in the local- and tabloid paper because they often join the "foreigner problem" with endangerment of inner security and supposedly threatening "overpopulation".
A German who reads the local press learns little that is positive about foreigners. Murder and manslaughter, robbery and (asylum-) fraud are typical offenses reported in detail. Modifying an Anglo-Saxon witticism about news (`Only bad news is good news'), one could say: Only evil foreigners are good foreigners. Ralph Weiss (1994) speaks of a "tendency to negativism" running through almost all media representations: "The negative stereotype `foreigners causes problems' may describe the perception of social reality for parts of the citizenry when the media draw a largely unanimous picture and push it to the center of public attention."
When the advantages of cooperative life with foreigners are described, a cultural enrichment for Germany and Germans is clear. Much more frequently, however, the threat of German resources by "asylum deceivers" is underscored. Besides material resources (prosperity, material resources, social net, jobs, wage levels, housing, environment and so forth), Guido Brauer (1995) distinguishes the following categories in newspaper articles: "stability of the system", "Germany's reputation in the world" and "collective security and order"
Teun A. van Dijk (1993) summarized his analysis in Britain and the Netherlands... that racism is induced or reproduced by the elite- and media discourse. In his opinion, the press is part of the problem.
"The strategies, structures and procedures of reporting, the choice of themes, the perspective, the transfer of opinions, style and rhetoric are directed at presenting "us" positively and "them" negatively. Minorities hardly have access to the press and are regarded as less credible. Their cause is only worth reporting when they cause problems, are caught in criminality or violence or can be represented as a threat to the white hegemony."
An analysis of television showed that members of ethnic minorities only have limited access to the mass media as participants in broadcasts and authors of information (1987). The migrant (usually living several years in Germany as part of our society) hardly finds his everyday worries and hopes on the screen. "He appears either as an exotic being on public display or as a problem case, a social relief object. Foreigners are primarily a theme of political attention, administrative conduct or thoughtful loving attention. So far as they appear - usually accidentally - in another thematic context, the representation ordinarily refers to cultural and everyday areas regarded as harmless by the majority society: sports, folklore, music, fashion, gastronomy, tourism and so forth (1987).
The mass media play the key role in a process that can be described as `ethnization', reducing the socio-genesis of a minority to its ethnic characteristics. With the help of the mass media, (ethnic) minorities are identified and often criminalized. This is especially true for gypsies who are mentioned almost exclusively as a collective in connection with criminality and conflicts and consequently appear firstly as a problem of public order and security.
Naming the non-German descent of suspects and offenders in newspaper articles about crimes inevitably creating the impression that many foreigners are disproportionally criminal seems very problematic. Identifying references to names, nationality and complexion in the scope of criminality reporting can only be justified when the actual search requires this identification... In reality, foreigners are not more criminal than Germans. There is hardly an "argument" of racists that cannot be convincingly refuted through critical reflection.
During the sinister 1991/93 asylum discussion, refugees were stamped as "deceivers", "social parasites" and "troublemakers" who endanger the prosperity and peaceful cooperative life in Germany. Conservative arguments, negative associations and pejorative connotations dominate in the media. "Killer words" like "pseudo-refugees" and collective symbols like "refugee floods" are joined with Germany's (caricaturized) depiction as a "full boat" or "prosperity island" which supposedly threaten to perish. "Through a prejudiced use of these keywords, the media contribute to a readiness for violence among certain groups or make violence seem necessary and legitimate" (Brosius/ Esser 1995)... "The supra-regional media message was that violence is a `successful method for politicians to quickly gain something" (Ludemann/ Erzberger 1994).
1.2 "Germans first!" - Ethnocentrism and Ethnic Nationalism in the Media
... Nora Ruthzel (1993) showed how the asylum debate was used in newspapers and journals to construct a homogeneous German people (as victims of exploitation/ foreign control by "others")... Organized rightwing extremism and racist violence meet a secret or openly manifest sympathy among media magnates...
Helmut Kellershohn (1994) named seven core ideologies of ethnic nationalism: firstly, the equation of people and nation, the idea of a "homogenized" nation according to ethnic/ racist criteria; secondly the elevation of the nation into a collective subject and relativization of specific interests through the primacy of the "national community"; thirdly, the justification of a "strong" state which organizes the national community by means of nationally minded elites and/or a charismatic leader; fourthly, the heroizing of the "national comrade", that "respectable German" who serves and makes every sacrifice for his national community with body and soul; fifthly, the ethnic/ racist construction of a "domestic enemy" made responsible for setbacks in realizing the national community (scapegoat function) who must take the rap as a negative projection for the national community (identity function); sixthly, a bio-political understanding of the "national body" and lastly a chauvinist orientation in the power state where the formation of society is understood as the state effectively representing "national interests" outwards. In addition, the primacy of foreign policy includes fixation on an outward enemy (or several enemies) which in whatever form is joined with the inner enemy...
The journal "Junge Freiheit" represents a modernized German nationalism in the tradition of an enlightened Wilhelmism, the "conservative revolution" and the struggle against western integration after 1945. Its authors put in question basic republican-democratic values (equality, freedom and brotherliness and sisterliness) in appealing to theoreticians like Carl Schmitt and Ernst Junger. They argue for a strong Germany, a "self-confident" nation and a powerful foreign policy. Germany's cultural and political-institutional `bond to the West' is criticized. More internal severity of the state and reprisals against the left are urged...
2. Migrants as Victims of Racist Violence -
Media Portrays of Rightwing Extremism
... Through the dominance of reporting of violence, rightwing extremism appears primarily as criminality and less as a (social) political problem. Readers are given the impression that rightwing extremism is a phenomenon occurring on streets and public plazas and requiring action by the police and the administration of justice. A tendency to (civil-) war reporting - entirely fixated on action and acts of violence - largely detached from social reality corresponds to the criminal reporting on rightwing extremism.
To counter the habituation effect and maintain the entertainment value of their reports, most journalists react to waves of racially motivated violence following a kind of `addiction logic'. They increase the `dose' of reporting violence since the interest of the recipients would otherwise soon wane. Only rightwing acts of violence are reported... dramatized as individual events and forgotten again.
Instead of explaining the social causes and political conditions of rightwing extremism, individual fates, spectacular marches and violent confrontations are preferred. Since rightwing extremists act and journalists react, the culprits are clearly in the center of media interest and the authors, accomplices and victims of racist violence remain obscure. Brigitta Huhnke (1993) compared the accounts of two large weeklies (Bild am Sonntag and Der Spiegel) and impressively described the "perpetrator-victim inversion". In the example of an article on the murder of a Turk by skinheads, she illustrated how extremist rightwing violent acts are trivialized as consequences of a disturbed adolescence. Militant skinheads appear as "disoriented youths", neo-nazis and rightwing terrorists who during the eighties were "confused individual culprits"...
Regarding racist violence, the mass media fulfill a catalysor function. "The expectations of perpetrators of violence and the media refer to one another and strengthen each other" (Esser/ Dominikowski 1993). The media echo is often more important than the act of violence itself for rightwing extremists who attack a refugee home. With greater outrages, the mass media double their effect... As Hans-Bernd Brosius and Frank Esser discovered, the media stimulate acts directed against foreigners... by their sensational reporting...
3. Alternatives to Past Media Practice
As racism is hardly a product of the mass media, the mass media hardly allow it to disappear. Making the problem tabu is not a real solution. Hiding or concealing does not make extremist rightwing tendencies disappear. By grappling with rightwing extremism and systematic enlightenment on its roots, methods, and goals, a further poisoning of the political culture can be resisted.
In the past, when German media magnates wanted to do something against racism, they frequently emphasized the advantages of immigration for Germany, its economy and system of social security. Since 1955, "foreign workers" were sought who met with resentment and racist cliches in Germany, not only a friendly reception. At that time, the media sought to counteract these tendencies with information about the economic benefits of the employment of foreigners. Today the mass media point to demographic problems (Germany's threatening old age and emphasize that our living standards cannot be maintained in the long run without accepting younger migrants rich with children. The two front page articles by Heiner Geissler in DIE ZEIT under the motto "We need foreigners" or "We are an immigration country" are typical. Limited immigration is in the national interest of Germany. The CDU politician sought to convince his readers that Germany needs far more immigrants than in the past.
For the average German reader, the racist message is clear: We must be nice to foreigners as long as they are useful. Whoever focuses on the cost-benefit calculus in the sense of a "functional anti-racism" appeals to the egoism of potential enemies of foreigners. Unintentionally with the competition orientation, he sues for a mechanism triggering racism under certain circumstances and the prosperity chauvinism constitutive for rightwing extremism in Germany.
Foreign workers can be depicted as competitors for scarce resources (for example jobs, housing, social benefits), annoying parasites, a danger for one's modest prosperity and also as people in distress. The unspeakable asylum debate has darkened the average German's picture of the foreign refugee so that more truthfulness and more openness may be a hard struggle.
Articles or broadcasts should avoid manifestations of sympathy and moral appeals or easily awaken aggressions arising out of rage over one's bad conscience. Moral appeals in favor of foreign citizens cannot replace solid information about their everyday life. For a long time, this reporting lacked substantive depth and continuity. One of the most important challenges of all media work is to keep important themes on the agenda. The media's characteristic and fate seems to be offering novelties everyday in which the ultimate dismisses the penultimate (Janke 1987).
An intercultural radio and an intercultural television must be realized in the realm of audio-visual media. More information about other cultures in the different program genres is necessary. For immigrating minorities whose language is not taught in the schools of host lands, their own radio and television programs broadcast locally are important... New possibilities (for example "interactive television") must be used to diminish racism.
The possibility of intercultural communication not only requires information about foreign continents, peoples and religions. The representation of compatriots of different ethnic descent in radio and television is imperative for realizing multicultural program possibilities. A change of internal structures and an open management are necessary without which the integration of the new can hardly succeed.
Instead of speaking about foreigners, we should speak with foreigners in radio- and television broadcasts. As contributors in the media, immigrants and their children could draw a more accurate picture of the reality of foreigners through their knowledge of different cultures and refute the prejudice that "immigrant workers" and refugees are mainly criminals or "anti-social elements" who "live off us Germans" (cf. Merten 1987). A positive change of opinion in parts of the general public would be doubtlessly easier if more migrants could find a job and set their own accents as persons with another view of German society, not only as experts for foreigner questions.
A change of perception is vital. The victims of violence must appear more often in the media without being reduced to a victim role. Foreigners do not need to be depicted as defenseless victims of violence showing the victim perspective to potential offenders. Media enlightenment on the difficult situation of migrants could awaken understanding and make possible peaceful cooperation. Instead of reporting about problems caused by political refugees with a trace of sensation-seeking, the television could report more accurately about their problems (flight trauma, fear of deportation and attacks, discrimination and exclusion, loneliness in old age).
Worldly connections between the non-German nationality and mostly negative experiences must be reflected in the media. Racism lives from stereotypes. Therefore an understanding portrayal of the everyday life of neighbors of foreign citizenship, their motives, roles and employment could attack the demonization of foreigners (Weiss, Nebel 1993). Experiences with racist behavior patters in the daily routine and consequences for the affected are thematicized much too rarely although a vast field opens up here for local reporting. Everywhere in Germany, there are cases where Africans are suspects and arrested only on account of their complexion without committing any c rime.
Stereotyped figures of speech should be questioned. Collective symbols like the "full boat" and the flood imagery ("refugee floods" and breaking dams) should be banished from the vocabulary of editors, anchormen and journalists. The "solidarity of thought" and the "sensitivity of language" must be supplemented by a "solidarity of conduct". Civil courage is necessary, not "too much courage", not bravery towards skinheads armed with baseball bats but readiness to reject all everyday discrimination and refusal to tolerate racist jokes.
Since the public and private television companies are under the sword of Demoscles of sinking ratings and advertising revenue, it is very doubtful whether a professional journalist code can guarantee responsible reporting about hostility towards foreigners and violence against foreigners. The worst excesses of sensation journalism will probably be controlled, for example acts of violence staged by unscrupulous television reporters. "Whoever urges others to violence or criminal acts and even pays them to gain spectacular pictures puts the credibility of the medium at risk and acts criminally himself" (Stolte 1993).
Whoever speaks about the responsibility of journalists, reporters and photographers may not be silent about the deterioration of working- and production conditions in the media. Georgios Tsapanos points out that the pressure facing media people ("dictate of the deadline") has become stronger and stronger and emphasizes that the growing (commercial) competition in private television and the increasing concentration in the print media have negative effects regarding quality. Under the intensified competitive conditions of a media market dominated by private enterprise, journalists find less and less opportunity for further training and carefully investigating a theme. The inclination to simplify and transmit only cliches about foreigners increases.
Beate Winkler (1995) urges a "media movement" which critically tackles effects of the mass media, initiates a social discussion process about solutions and formulates criteria. Fundamental democratic and social reforms in the media itself are necessary to push back rightwing extremism and stop racist racist violence. A democratic restructuring of the dual system is on the political agenda even though public radio is under financial and political pressure and new privatization offenses threaten.
Journalists must turn more strongly to social problems, for example mass unemployment, poverty, rent extortion and housing shortage and allow the disadvantaged - Germans and foreigners - to speak and make political demands (welfare state command of the constitution) instead of being restricted by liberal-conservative strategies of positional security and social cuts. "The radical right worldview is attractive because it gives a demagogic answer to a real question. A competing re-thematization of the social that expresses the origins of social insecurity and debates solutions is always part of the radical right `offer' (Weiss/ Nebel 1993). While rightwing extremist or populist parties connect the social and the national question, the media could unite the democratic and the social question.
Germans who fear foreigners because they fear for their - often modest - living standard should be told that realizing the equality of people in no way contradicts their own interests. Starting-points for anti-racist strategies, measures and projects exist in the media. They only need to be made known in the public which is a main challenge for the communcation media.
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