German TV harsher than al-Jazeera

15 December 2003

MUNICH – Former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein might now be in US hands but reports broadcast about the war to oust him from power on three of Germany’s largest television stations were more negative than those of the Arab television station al-Jazeera, a German magazine reports.

The Institute for Media and Internet Analysis in Bonn released the data, published in the latest Focus magazine, after evaluating neutrality of reports on the war broadcast by Germany’s two publicly funded television stations, ARD and ZDF, as well as private station RTL.

Barely 10 percent of the reports on the war that were broadcast on al-Jazeera were negative, while 20 percent of RTL’s reports were labelled negative and about 15 percent of ARD’s and ZDF’s reports were negative.

The magazine added that Germany’s foreign broadcaster, Deutsche Welle TV, provided balanced reports over the war in Iraq.

The Institute for Media and Internet Analysis, based in Bonn, conducts content analysis of newspapers, periodicals and television programmes on a monthly basis. It’s evaluation next month will compare reports about the war in six countries.