Based on your experience and perhaps on this blog what do you think about foreign election coverage…please feel free to elaborate in the comments section!

Bloomberg is a news agency that focuses on the business world. No doubt they were very concerned with the results of the German election because of Germany’s leadership in the realm of finance and what the results could mean in light of the global economic crisis.

It focuses on the plan for tax cuts (how to finance it, when it could be implemented) and the hope of making the government more transparent and less complex.

Post-Election coverage seen here deals with the new government and the tax cut challenge it faces. Such as how the new coalition will deal with the FDP’s plans for deeper tax cuts than the CDU had originally put forward.

They also comment that the DAX went up 2 percent after the win indicating trust from the financial world that the economy will continue to recover under the altered leadership.

The Lisbon treaty, of which Merkel was a strong supporter and was not yet voted on at this time, is brought up to find out what its passage could mean for European business. Unfortunately this question is not really answered in the TV spot but it demonstrates Bloomberg’s ability to make relevant connections from the election results, developing news, and the audiences interests. I feel it works more for the benefit of the audience then the Time article which is basically a quick history update made relevant by the elections (but still does not really address them).

NPR stands for National Public Radio and is respected news service in America that leans slightly to the left. It covers national and international news and also special interest reports. I knew I could count on them for decent reports on the 2009 German Election and found both before and after articles. The first, “Germany’s Election-Season Consensus: Yawn” was published on their website September 12. The title is consistent with all other reports from the campaign trail. We get it, Germany’s elections are boring…but NPR is the first article I have found that goes into the root of why there is no excitement. Of course as we talked about in class, America and Germany have a different political culture and the American campaigns are filled with more fan-fare then Germany’s. However I felt that political culture alone could not be the reason for such apathy towards a national election. “There are no real issues” said ARD anchor Joerg Schoenenborn, he even admitted that he gets bored covering the race. There seems to be a disenchantment with the two leading parties SPD and CDU/CSU. It seems Germans are frustrated with a lack of new ideas and that with the Grand Coalition government each party has lost themselves a bit and there was little to differentiate one from the other. (On a side note: I feel similarly about the American Republican and Democrat parties…google Ralph Nader for real facts about the broken two party system, or just ask me about it)

The second article, “Merkel Claims Victory in German Election” after the results were in confirms this idea. Not only did the SPD lose its membership in the ruling coalition for the first time in 11 years, but its 23 percent was a post war low. Voters were tired of “Political bickering” between the two and gave FDP the votes it needed to complete Merkel’s government. SPD voters felt that their party was lost in the Grand Coalition and its policy was changing to the right, but now many are more optimistic that they will be able to regroup themselves and get back to basics. With the new coalition with the FDP, NPR reports that Merkel is now more likely to get a better chance to implement her party’s moderate conservative policies and prove that they can pull Germany further out of the economic crisis.

As I said, I trust NPR for solid, consistent reports and find this coverage to be evidence of this. The coverage goes further in depth with what the election results mean for Germans and for the world (largely on the economic stage) and can be taken seriously. Unlike the CNN “in depth coverage” that I posted earlier…

CNN BackStory

Here is some preview coverage from CNN…they are only little soundbites about one minute long but what I found most enlightening was the “BackStory”

English

Deutsch

Try viewing this video (linked above) and let me know what you think…. This is the “Backstory” to the German 2009 elections…It an informal special report from CNN. Of course this is not what aired as the actual news reports on the election but I found this to be fairly comical. Especially the on site staging “Germany’s Voting the World is Watching” Do you think the world was watching in September? Just food for thought CNN.

Time Magazine is a world renown and widely read weekly news magazine. It is a respected authority and did its duty to run two articles prior to the German elections that contained information about the elections but approached form different angles. The first ran September 21 was entitled “Germany’s Election: Divided they Stand” playing off of the popular American rally cry: “Together we stand, Divided we fall.”

This article has little to do with the election and more with the ghost wall that exists in the heads of many Germans today. It mentions that Merkel is an example of how far Germany has come as a nation since reunification as both the first woman and Ossie to be Chancellor. However, it goes on to discuss how Germany has failed to recon with its divided past. Ostalgie or the celebration of the former life in the East is proof that many people have forgotten the horrors of the Stasi and GDR life. The director of Hohenschönhausen, a former G.D.R. prison and now a memorial is afraid “the success of Die Linke in the eastern states reveals a dangerous form of amnesia.”

The article criticizes Germany’s lackluster performance on the world stage in comparison to the amount of power it could wield economically stating: “…there seems to be an underlying concern, too, as if such visible engagement in global geopolitics is somehow dangerously unsettling to the good life that Germans have come to expect. The strongest impulse in German politics is to avoid big changes, to hold the country steady as she goes.” And how not much will change regardless of the election results.

The second shorter article “Germany After the Poll: A World Leader?” was a more concise evaluation of the upcoming elections and discussed the expected Merkel win and how this would/would not affect the economy and Afghan war. But mostly reinforces the idea that nothing will change with the elections, now days away: “With Merkel or without her, nobody expects much change in Germany’s worldview. That means a pro-U.S. and pro-Israel stance, a pragmatic approach in dealing with Russia and China, and a faith in negotiations and sanctions to bring recalcitrant countries like Iran back into constructive dialogue. Just don’t look to Berlin for big ideas or robust new approaches to international problems.” So, according to Time (and most other news outlets, American or otherwise) no one foresees any excitement in the changing of the top government guard

As I’m typing here I realize that I have given you a summery of the articles…more so than is probably necessary for this blog but perhaps that is because these articles are chuck full of fluff and its easy to get distracted by fluff. In regards to the actual elections this is relativity light article. But it appeals to the broad, casual American reader who does not have time or energy to concentrate on an election in a foreign land, one that will hardly affect them at all, and especially one that is, by all accounts, not expected to make ANY waves. The first article appeals more the the interest of Americans who may know little or nothing about life in the GDR but find escape stories fascinating…keeping with the American ideal of struggling for freedom.

As I have established, in the run up to the Bundestag election American media coverage was week. However they did pick up on the story of Vera Lengsfeld, the 57 yeaer old CDU representative who ran for the Berlin-Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg-Prenzlauer Berg Ost Wahlkreis. What drew US media attention to here was not her politics but her now infamous campaign poster where she posed in a low cut evening dress next to the image of Merkel in a similar dress. The slogan underneath translates as “we have more to offer.” Indeed!! This story was picked up by CNNs German Correspondent , Frederik Pleitgen, on August 13th (Transscript here: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0908/12/sitroom.02.html). Wolf Blitzer’s transiton to the story went “In Germany, raising the level of interest in this year’s election campaign along with some eyebrows…” The next day the St. Petersburg Times, Florida. It was only a 10 line blurb. It was a purley “candy” piece of reporting, meant to break up the program on CNN and pique the readers interest with something saucy to encourage them to read the rest of the international column. There was no meat to the story, no implications suggested or even what the policies of the CDU were.

The story was also picked up by the writers of Comedy Central’s the Colbert Report. This television program sometimes referred to as “fake news” is a satire of the news of the day. It is meant to be comedy but a surprising amount of College Students and adults use this program and the Daily Show hosted by Jon Stewart (in a similar “Fake News” fashion) as a source of national and international news.

Watch the video clip HERE!

As you can see from the clip, Colbert uses the campaign ad to poke fun at Obama, former president Bush, and Republicans in congress (suggesting they should wear low cut dresses to attract the “schwing” vote). Again, like CNN and the St. Petersberg Times report, there was no important information in the spot, and was only meant to entertain.

As an American studying in Germany of course I am interested in what my German classmates think about the American governmental system, politicians, and our foreign policy. However what I forgot to consider is how little my American classmates back home know about the German system. It is not standard learning in high school so unless one has a special interest or is a Political science or International Relations major they would have little knowledge of it outside of what can be found in the newspapers or on CNN. With the recent 2009 parliamentary elections I thought for sure there would be more information out there. However, I remember when I read about the elections I read about it on Deutsche Welle, a German government sponsored news site and the BBC, a British and arguably European website. I began to realize that I couldn’t recall any American news from the election last year and begun digging. Doing a basic ProQuest search for periodicals brought up tones of results from the campaign trail and the results broken down into what it could me for Europe and the world. However, most of these were translated articles from German papers or from British reports. Americas major media outlets had a poor showing and what it did cover was mostly the results of the election. For more information in on the elections I had to dig into more independent, less circulated media outlets such as National Public Radio and Bloomberg. Stay tuned as I try to decipher and explain the American media’s perspective on international elections…namely the German Bundestag elections in 2009.

My turn was to study some articles from German newspapers, magazines and a short television documentary concerning facts about the American presidential elections in 2008. Therefore I have picked out two articles from the famous German internet magazine “Spiegel Online”, one articles from focus.de and an election-analysis from sueddeutsche.de. For the television coverage I’ve choosen a short portrait documentary from the German television channel “ZDF” about Barack Obama.

Generally we can say that in both “Spiegel Online”-articles from the day after his election, 5th November 2008, are written in a positive way. The description is filled almost with positive and friendly words for the new president. The headline of the first article is called “Triumph of a lucky child”, the second titles “Obama reaches a historical win”. Only the topic shows the German pro-Obama-attitude.

In both “Spiegel Online”-texts Obama is treated like a kind of popstar with a human touch: He is called the new “person of hope” who likes theological books, always held “wonderful speeches” and must be a “faithful husband and a proud father”.

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,588495,00.html

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,588285,00.html

The article from focus.de (5th November 2008) seems similar to that from “Spiegel Online”: There’s a long description of the reaction of the American people, who were cheering and screaming with tears in their eyes because of Obama’s election victory.

http://www.focus.de/politik/ausland/uswahl/us-wahl-barack-obama-neuer-praesident-der-usa-_aid_346163.html

Only the election analysis from sueddeutsche.de (5th November 2008) seems to be more neutral at a first glance. Nevertheless the facts are also presented in a positive way: already in the topic Obama is compared with Kennedy. Furthermore the description of the Americans is not really objective. For example the analysis shows how the “crowds of people” are waiting in front of the polling stations with a lot of patience.

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/analyse-von-obamas-wahlerfolg-obama-uebertrifft-kennedy-1.522420

The most positive Obama-presentation shows the ZDF-documentary with the title “Barack Obama in portrait” from 22nd February 2008. The film celebrates him as a “new star of American politics”, he’s described as “young”, “charismatic” and a “person with a quick start”. Obama is compared with Hollywood (half of the celebrities favour him), he is the “new person of hope”. Also the scenes and pictures, which were chosen for the documentary are really emotional: there are screaming fans with Obama-flags, a lot of scenes with Obama and his children and wife and nevertheless Stevie Wonder who sings his own song for Obama.