The parasitism of German media

Politicians and the media are rarely ever a good combination when it comes to the result of their “working together”. Still, combined they form a symbiosis where the media and press take over the role of a parasite. Since the media needs a host, in this scenario being the politicians, they cause both support and damage to the politicians. Normally, it is the latter.

And not surprisingly, this is once again the case in good ol’ Germany. This time I feel like everyone has been brainwashed by the media. Like they control the very words coming out of society’s foul, stupid, narrow-minded mouth. Now in natural science brainwashing is an extremely interesting phenomenon and the Emerald Jewel Wasp does it so well. I could watch this video over and over and over again:

But let’s get back to the topic I am actually referring to. One gets the feeling that the media has targeted one party in particular over the last couple of months: the Free Democratic Party (FDP). This party has been suffering from internal quarrels over the last year, with the climax having been reached when parliament had to be dissolved in the state of Saarland just over a year ago, because governance could not be carried out anymore. More recently though, the chairman of the FDP parliamentary faction, Rainer Brüderle, became a personal target for the press. More specifically, he became the victim of an apparent political smear campaign, as a young female journalist made allegations against him on sexism grounds due to a late night interview she did with him at a Hotel bar a year ago. Allegedly, Brüderle was flirting quite heavily with the young journalist and made comments on her chest measurement, stating that she would “fit in a Dirndl very well”. This has caused a huge sexism debate in Germany, which I actually consider justifiable. But the fact that this young female journalist did not care to report on the incident just after it occurred, but rather waited until Brüderle was nominated as leading candidate for the Bundestag elections in September this year, one cannot help to notice that the timing cries out for a smear campaign.

Just around the time the Rainer Brüderle debate moved into the background again, another FDP politician had to be selected for the media to feed on. This time, it has hit Jörg-Uwe Hahn, the vice prime minister of Hesse, who allegedly made a racist comment on his superior, Philipp Rösler, who is the chairman of the FDP and Vice Chancellor of Germany. He is of Vietnamese descent and has been criticized on his job continuously both within his party and outside.

In an interview, Hahn made the statement: “On Philipp Rösler however, I would like to know whether our society is ready yet to further accept an Asian-looking Vice Chancellor.”

While I admit that this statement can be misinterpreted under false circumstances, Rösler himself said that he does not understand what the fuss is all about and that Hahn is a colleague and friend of his and that he did not interpret it as a racist comment. But apparently this is not enough. If the media says he is a racist, then by God’s grace he must be a racist.

In my eyes, Hahn criticizes society for not being open enough when it comes to racial heritage of politicians. And I think he is spot on. Quite a few people have gotten the impression that criticism of Phillip Rösler is proportionally high compared to other politicians. Of course, one cannot ignore the fact that there is a staggering number of problems the party has to deal with, but I think Rösler’s Asian roots might be perceived negatively, even if this occurs involuntarily in the subconscious.

The chairman of the Young Liberals (JuLi), Lasse Becker, made this quite clear when he said that people come to the election campaign booth in the pedestrian area and say “I would vote for your party, but the Chinese guy would have to go first”.

Now when I read the comments of users on the Internet on this topic, I can’t help but think that society is becoming more stupid by the day. For me, the term “racism” is abused so much nowadays, that many people do not know the difference between a statement on racial heritage and actual racism anymore. If you want to know what racism really is, I can only recommend you ask someone in South Africa or Namibia, where Apartheid is still a topic today. Unfortunately though, the media is part of this society and stupidity does not get excluded when the word journalism is used. At least the Emerald Jewel Wasp knows what it’s doing.

Can you imagine your world of music without YouTube?

Well, can you? Did you watch Gangam Style on the infamous video platform when it just became popular? Do you look for music videos of your favorite artists and songs or try to find songs that you caught the melody of at last night’s party? If you do some of these things, you probably don’t live in Germany…

Because around here, almost all music videos or videos just containing copyrighted music are blocked on YouTube. What sounds like internet censorship in China and other non-western parts of the world is actually the sad everyday life of people in Germany. So why is that?

The Süddeutsche Zeitung released an article with some statistics at the end of January. It turns out that of the top 1000 videos on YouTube, most of them being popular music videos, 61.5% are not watchable within Germany. If you click on one of these videos, you’ll see a message like this:

So, in a nation where freedom is spelled with a capital “f”, music videos are not accessible on the world’s largest video collection platform. Even if the artist himself has uploaded the video, chances are it cannot be watched in Germany. In comparison, of the top 1000 most popular videos on YouTube, 15.3% cannot be accessed in South Sudan, 5.1% in the State of Vatican and 4,4% in Afghanistan.

To put it into a few words: it’s a disgrace. A hypocrisy for a nation that criticizes countries like Ukraine, Russia and China for not being as democratic, lets its people access less music videos than the freshly established, third-world and islamic nation of South Sudan. And it’s not even close.

The reason behind this is that YouTube itself blocks these videos for German viewers. It does so in order to protect itself from copyright infringement claims by GEMA – the Society for musical performing and mechanical reproduction rights (Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte), the private but state-authorized copyright society in Germany.

Now people outside of Germany might ask why this is a problem, since many other western nations also have similar institutions. Well, Google, the parent company of YouTube, managed to settle on a deal with each on the amount of money the respective copyright society receives for each video clicked. Unfortunately, this is where the notorious German stinginess dominates again – because GEMA demands a resounding 0,00375 Euros (or 0,375 cents) per view. That is more than three times as much as the copyright society in Britain receives from Google. So in the end, GEMA is the reason for Germans not being able to watch videos that contain any sort of copyrighted music. Google/YouTube tried to solve this problem by asking GEMA for a list of artists and titles which they represent the copyrights of, but GEMA denied the request, saying that it would not make sense to send Google such a list, since it is Google itself that blocks the videos.

GEMA has since become an organization which the majority of people in Germany love to hate, especially young people who enjoy keeping up in the music world. The Germafrican contacted GEMA and asked why they insist on demanding such an outrageously high amount. I received the following answer:

“…in other countries, YouTube put pressure on the copyright societies. Higher sums have also been demanded there. We believe that our demands are not too high, but fair and adequate for our members.“

In the end, it comes down to how greedy GEMA is and whether it could settle for less money. Considering that the board members receive an annual salary of nearly 500.000 Euros, one might think they are in a position where negotiation with lower sums should be possible.

GEMA is obviously not aware of any social responsibility. Music is one of the most important parts of culture and in our modern times, where technology enables us to share pretty much anything, it is a real shame that a country like Germany is so far behind when it comes to simply listening to some music on YouTube, which normally is taken for granted in pretty much every other nation on our planet…