The debate about the origin of Covid-19 (“laboratory theory”) has impressively demonstrated that the prevailing opinion is not necessarily correct, and that even a position denigrated by opinion leaders and mainstream media as a conspiracy theory can be correct. Even more serious appears the complete Ignoring information, such as the phrase often heard in recent months that there is “no journalists in Gaza“, while since October 2023 more than 200 Palestinian media workers have been were killed and the Qatari broadcaster Al-Jazeera reported on the work of the “most moral army in the world“ (according to the Arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court wanted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) can follow live.
It seems all the more urgent to emphasize the value of others, be it an opinion or a medium. The narrowing corridor of opinion in Germany, which has been lamented so much since the coronavirus pandemic and, ironically, denounced by the current US administration, is not just a perception. There is a lack of respectful engagement with opposing positions and a comprehensive perspective on current crises.
Example Corona: The following example from 2020 shows that even the "fact finders" of the Tagesschau can be seriously wrong. In it, the theory that the coronavirus originated in a laboratory, which many experts now consider likely, is dismissed as a conspiracy theory:
The spread of SARS-CoV-2 has been accompanied by wild conspiracy theories from the very beginning. When the epidemic was still confined to China, speculation about its origins was already circulating. The novel virus either originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, it was said, or from greedy businessmen (...)
Tagesschau “Fact Finder” from April 6, 2020
Such journalistic (mis)assessments disguised as “facts” are now particularly explosive due to the revelation of a secret Investigation by the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), according to which he considered the laboratory theory to be more likely than a natural origin of the virus.
Example Gaza: For far too long, it has been (and continues to be) over 60.000 – 100.000 dead later partly still) in the leading German media the immeasurable suffering of the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza is ignored or compared with the suffering of the approximately 1.100 Israeli victims of October 7, 2023. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' justified remark that the brutal attack "did not take place in a vacuum" was scandalized as follows:
UN Secretary-General Guterres downplays Hamas terror – “Not in a vacuum”
Headline of WELT on October 25, 2023
Some media outlets readily picked up on an "infographic" created by the Israeli military that purported to show the supposed Hamas headquarters beneath Al-Shifa Hospital. After the hospital was stormed and destroyed, nothing of the sort was found there.
The handling of information from the opposing side and independent sources is quite different: Even the verifiably determined victim figures are doubted and if the International Criminal Court Arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the war crime of starvation, the entire institution is attacked.
The dramatic impact of the unchecked adoption of Israeli military propaganda (“Hamas uses human shields”) in leading German media is impressively documented by a Blog of journalist Fabian Goldmann.
Example Sudan: Reporting on the greatest humanitarian catastrophe of our time is not even remotely to the necessary extent Hundreds of thousands of people are thus literally left to their fate.
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