Germany’s Only Independent Newspaper Says Germany's Gov’t. Is Controlled by US Gov’t

ERIC ZUESSE | 04.01.2017 |

Germany’s Only Independent Newspaper Says Germany’s Gov’t. Is Controlled by US Gov’t

Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten (DWN), or German Economic News — an online daily news service for Germans, which has vigorously fought against the U.S. CIA’s longstanding (and now intensifying control over Germany’s ‘news’ media, and which has also helped to promote a book by an editor for the Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung who publicly exposed and denounced his previous subordination to the CIA, and who is now being blackballed by Germany’s ’news’media for reporting such things — is finally going behind a pay-wall to sustain its independence, and alleges that the reason for doing this is that financial pressures from the Establishment’s ’news’media require that this be done, or else DWN will be forced to shut down service altogether.

Germany, as an outpost of the U.S. Empire, has its ‘news’media seeking to crush ‘fake news’, just as is the case inside the Empire’s center — the U.S.

Here is the announcement, translated by me:

ON OUR OWN BEHALF

German Radio Defames DWN: Please support us!

German Economic News  |  Released:29.12.16 01:08 Clock

The Deutschlandradio has tried to defame the DWN — with a smooth counterfeit. Please support the independence of DWN with a subscription.

Dear readers,

From now on, three articles of the German Economic News are free to read other articles only after completing a subscription of 7.99 € [currently around $8] per month [or else $80/year]. You do not enter into any obligation, the subscription can be terminated at any time.

The first successes in the subscription show us that you, dear readers, want to support us: We have immediately won our first sponsors. Numerous readers even support us with donations, which are clearly above the subscription price. We would like to thank you very much!

This action is necessary because the German media market is distorted by the massive presence of public service broadcasters. The broadcasters have an annual budget of € 8 billion from a taxpayer-funded budget. The DWN recently had to take note of the fact that broadcasting fees are not only used for the [German Radio’s] program [service], but also for the denunciation of other media. In an article in which German Radio has uncritically reported the boycott call by an employee of Scholz & Friends on numerous websites, German Radio denounced the DWN — in however an unusually clumsy way: The German Radio has quite boldly falsified a quotation, to defame DWN. In response, we have proceeded legally and have sought a preliminary injunction from the Landgericht Berlin, against German Radio, on pain of a fine of up to 250,000.00 Euro, to prohibit [their] continuing to spread the hoax.

The situation is grotesque: money from their broadcasting is used to falsify quotations. This type of action by a public broadcaster, against DWN, in connection with a report on the advertising industry is potentially threatening.

The situation is critical because Facebook is rapidly breaking the economic base of critical and independent media. US platforms such as Facebook and Google have largely overriden the classic advertising model. This has several reasons.

The US corporations are already making the most of the growth in online advertising. Facebook and Google do not know any separation between advertising and editorial content. Due to their inscrutable system of «algorithms», they are unrestrainedly able to manipulate their readers, and to offer themselves to many commercial and politically interested parties as an «advertising platform». This benefits many companies: they can hide their advertising messages in seemingly unsuspicious postings, or can manipulate themselves in Google search results. The public broadcasters also make massive use of this. In practice, this means that broadcasting fees from Germany go to US corporations, so that the public-law media [German-government media] in the search results stand above the independent media [which consequently suffer greatly].

Another trend is that purchased media are directly competing with the purely journalistic media. The advertising agency WPP has been registered with the US magazine vice. This allows WPP to redirect its advertisers to their own «product». WPP, on the other hand, is the parent company of the advertising agency Scholz & Friends — the agency has been discredited in recent days because one of its employees denounced critical websites such as those of Henryk Broder or Roland Tichy. Broder has reportedly lost significant ad sales.

The business model of many [such] alternative media is out of the question for DWN: they finance themselves by selling texts as promotional measures for books, magazines, events or political activism. Many NGOs [‘non-profits’] also seem to be making journalistic offers to promote their core business — political campaigns [propaganda].

Twitter, Facebook and Google offer all sorts of possibilities for disinformation and manipulation: secret services, lobbyists, parties, corporations, associations, states and speculators run accounts that appear to be informative, but actually serve bare manipulation. This model also destroys the classic advertising model, because it is now easy for a company to create the field for commercial interests via a seemingly «journalistic» channel.

This development has led to a dramatic decline in online advertising across all critical-journalistic products. It is cheaper and more efficient for advertisers to address their audience through covert channels.

All these circumstances are presented by the media — and it is not just the question of DWN — about the central question: Is there a demand for our offer? We openly address this issue to you, dear readers: You are the only public who really have an interest in a prosperous future of DWN — specifically as a medium that reports critically and completely independently. Against the backdrop of the above-mentioned presence of PR, spin-doctors and disinformation, critical and independent reporting has become even more complex: all important documents in the financial sector are in English. Most EU papers are in EU-English. It is only possible to report on the Syrian War if one can read Arabic and Turkish sources in the original. For a well-founded Europe coverage, one has to master 27 languages —and not just that: you must have a team that is familiar with the political and cultural context of these countries in order to correctly classify what the linguistic messages really mean.

These costs usually arise in areas where there is neither advertising nor political support: Who wants to pay for research and articles on geopolitics, central banks, raw materials, war, corruption, deception and manipulation? The core business of DWN is exactly these issues at the interface between business and politics. We do not deal with any problem-free [safe, uncontroversial] subjects.

We want to be quite open at this point: Only you, dear readers, can secure the future of DWN. It is a sort of publicist referendum to which we submit: We ask you if the DWN is worth 7.99 € per month. The result is open. It is in the nature of the market economy that it is not our discretion to accept the result of this referendum or not. If there are not enough subscribers, then there is also no market for the DWN. However, if enough readers hold the DWN for an important voice in Germany, put us in the position to forcefully raise this voice with your subscription. A democracy needs free and incorruptible media. There is no alternative.

We sincerely request your support.

The editorial office

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   

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