Saturday, April 26, 2014

A Gloomy View of an Unfree Press

Note: Since it took so long to write this, little copy-editing was done. Please forgive any errors and take any statements with a pinch of skepticism.

On Thursday I went to the Humboldt University building on Unter den Linden.

I came roughly fifteen minutes early for the event, which was a talk within the frame of the Mosse Lectures about the history of war reporting.

Having traipsed around the building a long time ago, when I was figuring out whether to apply at the Humboldt University, it was not unfamiliar; the Senatssaal, nevertheless, was a new experience.

The Senate Chamber has nearly floor-to-ceiling curtains — framed in dark, laminate-like wood that appeared fairly East-German-like in its aesthetic — at its four or five windows with a prime perspective on the Humboldt Uni forecourt, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, the Bebelplatz and Unter den Linden itself, interspersed with busts of Hegel and companions. Twin full-length portrait paintings of gentlemen whom I presumed rashly to be the Humboldt brothers hang at the wall opposite. A ceiling partitioned, indented or coffered in four or five lengthy rectangles lies above an array of chandeliers, lamplights which are enshrouded in rows of dented, crystal-like squares, like glass tiles in a bath.

At the front there was a raised stage where the speaker could assume the podium at left, and multiple speakers could answer questions seated at microphones at the right.

The reason why I write this at length is, of course, because I had free time. The rest of the interval I watched the audiovisual staff, who were filming the talk, and the photographer, partly since I was fascinated that she was making flash photographs of the audience when the seats were half- or a third-filled and the point of taking pictures was in doubt, then transitioning to non-flash with little difficulty afterward.

A Chief of the Institute of German Literature at the Humboldt University took up the microphone first to introduce this fresh season of Mosse Lectures, named to honour the naturalized American grandson of the man who founded the Mosse publishing house (Berliner Tageblatt etc.). He was evidently deeply moved by the death of Anja Niedringhaus, the photojournalist who recently died in Afghanistan. — Her lecture will be replaced by a memorial, to which we were all invited. — Apart from his tributes to her, to Marie Colvin and to Jörg Armbruster, he mentioned as a topic the ethical considerations of journalists reporting on war.

As for female journalists in wartime, they have their own challenges and their own benefits, he said, reminding me at once that I'd read that women reporters tend to be far more easily able to speak with other women in Afghanistan (for instance) where religion-based barriers exist. Also, that they're less likely to be mistaken for fighters or for threatening figures in general. I'd have to look for the article again, because I did a lot of reading on the subject after Marie Colvin was killed.

GIVEN this introduction, the matter of the lecture itself came as a shock. The lecture was held by a professor from a university in Braunschweig, and the material of her speech was the comparison of peacetime and wartime reporting.

After quoting a newspaper report from 1866 about the Battle at Königgrätz, where Austrians and Prussians were slaughtering each other at will, she turned to the peacetime situation in the Weimar Republic and represented the press not so much as strivers for truth and enlightenment as malleable guests at the table of power. Invited to events and mingling with politicians, they were given information that they were permitted to publish and information that they were permitted to keep in mind as background information.

THIS symbiosis between the journalistic and political spheres reminded me at once of an exchange under a Guardian article (April 23rd), with the journalist who wrote the article:
[Commenter]:

Andrew, why are most [Note: politicians'] speeches released word for word in advance, leading to articles reading "...will say later today"? It makes the article weird and awkward to read and personally I find it irritating. Since when have politicians done it? Was it to get in that day's printed press, and if so, is it still necessary with news websites?

Andrew Sparrow:

It's probably been going on since the 18th century. I vaguely recall a story about a printer getting into trouble with the Commons authorities then for publishing a speech based on a text he had been given in advance. It certainly became normal once the lobby started to function at the end of the 19thc and start of the 20thc. Politicians release advance excerpts for two main reasons. 1. It means you get two bits of the news cherry: a story in advance, and then another on the day. And, 2, it means they can shape the agenda. If you release an excerpt with just four paragraphs, journalists will report those bits (if they think they make a story). But if you just give them the whole speech, you have less control over what "line" they will choose to take.

But I agree that the "will say" formula is irritating. I sometimes report it as "said, in an excerpt released in advance" as an alternative.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Leaving, Entering, Skipping Around the Ivory Tower

This afternoon I had slept in and didn't attend any lectures.

It was not entirely unanticipated because I spent a large chunk of time and effort on foraging through the Free University's, Humboldt University's, and on Papa's recommendation several Max-Planck-Institutes' and the Fraunhofer foundation's websites in pursuit of classes or events I'd want to attend, yesterday. There were many, surprisingly; I was rather bowled over by the proliferation of things, and by the logistical difficulties of shuttling back and forth.

PARTLY, the point of exmatriculating myself from university in July was to allow myself to learn to read up on subjects in a level of depth and detail that isn't usually practical in the frame of the institution.

It might not be everyone's cup of tea, and if one's career is riding on academic transcripts, a truly high level of rigour can be prejudicial in the long run. Besides it must take energy to chase after the lethargic minds of all the students.

SO I decided to read up on political theory to compensate for missing the lecture on that subject. Because of the 1960s Greece course I audited last semester, and my questions to Papa regarding the 1960s in general, I've had Herbert Marcuse's Ideen zu einer kritischen Theorie der Gesellschaft lying around my room for a few months.

AS AN ignoramus freshly hatched from the egg, I decided to read the Wikipedia article first. This led me to YouTube. So I spent a very agreeable time listening to interviews with Marcuse: an American interview in the late eighties and a much frostier German one in the mid-seventies.

I have wanted to tear out my hair whenever philosophical rhetoric has garlanded the least-liked readings from university, so it was lovely to hear a straightforward language; and given the kind of debate I read about American politics and the articles I waded through in Political Science, it was lovely, too, to hear a modest and humane discussion that interweaves political reality as well as ideological or philosophical aspirations. In a way it was stuff of ordinary, common sense, and perhaps underlined the assertion of Marcuse himself that he happened to chime with the Zeitgeist when he became hugely popular during the 60s uprisings, and not that he was the inventor of the ideas.

It also fit a thing that I like about North America: a professor generally wields the same level of grammatical and lexical complexity, in his daily life, as any individual.