Peter Kloeppel: ‘The Media Have A Responsibility’
For weeks, the editorial conferences for “RTL Aktuell” and Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland’s other news programs have revolved around one major focus topic: The flow of refugees into Western Europe and especially here to Germany. For us journalists this is a particular challenge. In recent years, we’ve rarely had a news situation that is so extremely charged both emotionally and in terms of content. Yet at the same time this challenge also gives us an opportunity to tell our viewers as comprehensively and objectively as possible about the changing face of Germany. At Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland, we see it as our responsibility to highlight the opportunities for Germany without concealing the risks.
There have long been signs of a refugee movement towards the European Union. I remember well several conversations I’ve had in the past few years with our Middle East correspondent Antonia Rados, a veteran of many crises, who pointed to the desperation of the people in the refugee camps at the start of 2011 shortly after the civil war began in Syria. “At tome point these people will refuse to stay in the tent cities or overcrowded camps of Syria’s neighboring countries like Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey any longer,” she told me. “At some point, they will start moving.” The growing terror of the IS militias, the bloody acts of violence against innocent people, and the half-hearted response of Western and Arab governments have only made the situation worse in recent years.
We reported several times on the hopeless situation of refugees from civil wars, but the possibility of hundreds of thousands of them taking to the road always appeared unlikely to us as well. All the while, we were receiving footage of African refugees setting out on the perilous crossing from Libya, Tunisia or Morocco towards Italy and Spain. Back in 2011, our reporter Jenke von Wilmsdorff himself ventured onto one of these floating wrecks to make the crossing from Tunisia to Lampedusa. The journey took 45 hours, and at times it seemed uncertain whether he and the other 300-plus passengers would actually reach a safe haven. Luckily everything went well – but in the years before and after, thousands of refugees did not survive the rough passage over the Mediterranean. The business of the people-smuggling gangs flourished nonetheless.
RTL correspondent Nicole Macheroux-Denault went to the root cause of thousands fleeing Africa, reporting from war zones, on tribal feuds, famine, corrupt governments and the great hopelessness and despair of the younger generation in particular. “The young people want to go to Europe,” she told us again and again, “even though their future there is far from assured, and admission is not guaranteed. But they would rather live in the EU with an uncertain future than without hope in Africa – this is the motto of most of those who want to leave.”
So you could say we had been “warned” by the spring of 2015. And western governments could have, or rather should also have been. But hardly anyone was really “prepared,” despite the ample flow of information, despite the exhortations of refugee organizations, despite the first major flows of people through Turkey towards Greece. Instead, in May, June and July, Germany and the EU were firmly in the grip of the euro crisis. Not a newscast passed without bad news of how expensive the Greek bailout would be. No newspaper without headlines from Athens. The online media raced to see who could publish the latest, ever-growing cost of rescue plans. Hardly anyone talked about refugees, and even in the centers of government in Paris, Berlin and Brussels, the focus was almost exclusively on the question: Will Greece remain in the euro, or will there be a Grexit? Hardly anyone noticed the incipient exodus in the Near and Middle East.
It’s not just us journalists who talk a lot these days about the “power of images,” because it is images that has shown us all for some weeks what we could scarcely rationally imagine. Images of exhausted mothers and fathers who have been walking for long days or weeks with children on their backs through the scorching heat of southern Europe, now reaching German refugee camps with their last strength. Pictures of hastily erected barbed wire in a Europe that is rightly so proud of being “borderless.” Pictures of refugees wandering on foot along a highway to Germany, of heartbreaking scenes at stations where families storm waiting trains, not knowing when or where they are going.
We have to show these pictures because they concern us all, because they trigger something in us and move us. The Syrian boy Aylan who drowned just off the tourist beach of Bodrum is part of this drama to which we cannot close our eyes. In our newsrooms, we discussed at length whether to allow death to be beamed into our living rooms so dramatically. And we decided: yes. This picture is a wake-up call. We show it, but from a distance, and without taking away the dignity of the lifeless body. We know other decisions are also possible, and that there are media in Germany that decided otherwise. Probably no other image will contribute to the iconography of the refugee drama like this - and presumably this picture has had the effect of make the receptiveness of the German people more boundless than we could ever have imagined.
This was one of the reasons Mediengruppe RTL devoted a whole theme day to the refugees, with “RTL Aktuell” and N-TV broadcasting from a reception camp in Saarland. The flow of refugees will not abate in the weeks and months, and we will not limit our coverage. Because the real challenges are only beginning for us in Germany now. Integration is becoming a societal issue that hardly anyone can ignore, nor should they. The media and we journalists in general have a responsibility to identify the tasks that lie ahead. The hospitality and welcoming culture that was in evidence thousand-fold at German railroad stations is an indication of the will of the people to take on this task.
We all enjoy the positive comments from all over the world – Germany is perceived as a wealthy country that is willing to share. But we must also try to preserve this feeling of elation about our helpfulness for the future and channel it into active integration efforts. This concerns us all: politicians, businessmen, co-workers, classmates, neighbors and friends. We journalists will report on whether and how Germany is coping with a challenge that is unique in history. Our country will change its face - but we have known change and transformation for hundreds of years. The 21st century is not an age of stagnation. The people who seek refuge here set something in motion in our hearts and minds. And it is up to us to decide which direction we move in – together, courageously, and optimistically
On Aug 31 RTL, N-TV, Vox and RTL 2 highlighted the situation of refugees with a full theme day and launched a fundraising campaign through the Stiftung RTL – Wir helfen Kindern foundation, which has raised €70,000 to date. Anyone wishing to donate can do so via the following bank account:
Recipient: Stiftung RTL – Wir helfen Kindern
IBAN: DE55 370 605 905 605 605 605
Bank: Sparda-Bank West
BIC: GENODED1SPK
Keyword: Flüchtlinge
