Jessica Birthisel | Oct. 26, 2010
 |
| Photo by Jessica Birthisel |
| From left, German broadcasters Matthias Veit of WDR in Cologne and Maren Beuscher of ZDF and 3Sat in Berlin visited Ernie Pyle Hall this week. They are part of the RIAS journalist exchange program. |
Related |
This week, the school welcomed Matthias Veit of WDR in Cologne and Maren Beuscher of ZDF and 3Sat in Berlin, both of whom spoke Monday in the Ernie Pyle Hall library where guests asked questions about policies and practices in Germany.
The School of Journalism has hosted RIAS journalists and has sent students to Berlin to participate. Alumni Kaylyn Easton, BAJ ’09, and Kevin Grieves, PhD ’09, were RIAS exchange journalists and associate professor Mike Conway and doctoral student Rosemary Pennington participated in the RIAS program several years ago through other schools or employers.
Beuscher, who provides extensive coverage of the Muslim population in Germany, shoots video for her same-day reporting. With quick turnaround times and little time for editing, she said keeping up with current events is crucial to her reporting.
“It’s very important always to be informed on what’s going on in Berlin,” she said of her habit of reading a lot of news.
Conway, who hosted the fellows along with Pennington, shifted the conversation to the Turkish Muslim population in Germany. This launched the guests into a conversation about German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s recent “multikulti” comment, wherein she suggested that Germany’s attempt to build a multicultural society has utterly failed.
As Beuscher explained, in the 1960s, Germany invited foreign workers to come to Germany.
“We invited them and expected them to go back in five or 10 years,” she explained. But they didn’t, and today Germany has approximately 4 million Turkish Muslims.
Veit explained that Merkel wasn’t trying to make an extreme conservative statement, but was rather thinking about how to provide a new start for the immigrants in the country, many of whom do not speak German and are not educated for the country’s most in-demand jobs.
Beuscher estimated that 20 percent of Muslims in the country are not sending their children to school, something that keeps the issue of integration on the table.
Professor Lars Willnat asked about the role of the media in the country’s attitudes about Muslims, especially in light of the popularity of German author Thilo Sarrazin’s new book, Deutschland schafft sich ab (Germany Does Away With Itself), which criticizes the Muslim population in Germany for an unwillingness to integrate.
“In my opinion,” said Beuscher, “the media play a really important role. You know the media. They only show extremes.”
She said media coverage gravitates toward stereotypes, covering either the highly integrated female Muslim lawyer with three graduate degrees or the Muslim street gangs taking over the streets.
“The sensation is always interesting,” said Beuscher, who said she tries to provide balanced coverage of everyday Muslims in Germany. “In the end, the media should say, ‘We won’t cover it.’ But if one starts, the others follow.”
Willnat pointed out that the American media had its fair share of problems with covering Muslim communities, from the Park51 mosque to the threatened Quran burning in Florida. This shifted the conversation from German politics to American politics. Pennington asked how the American elections are playing out in Germany.
“We’re very interested in Obama,” said Veit, “ and we don’t understand why he’s not popular. Obama’s still very popular in Germany.”
Veit said Germans like Obama because he is an intellectual, and because he seems like the kind of politician who would talk to Europe before making any rash foreign policy decisions.
Americans in the audience gave several theories for Obama’s decreased popularity, from the popularity of conservative talk radio and cable news, to an unwillingness among the American people to expose themselves to well-rounded political coverage, to a disconnect between Washington polices and their repercussions for everyday Americans.
 |
| Photo by Jessica Birthisel |
| Beuscher, center, and Veit spoke with students after their talk Monday afternoon. The roundtable was just one event during their three weeks touring universities and media outlets in the U.S. |
Veit agreed, saying that in Germany, many expect the government to fix all of their problems.
The roundtable marked just one part of the Germans’ visit to Bloomington. They will also tour area media outlets in Bloomington and Indianapolis as well as visit classes during their stay, part of a three-week trip to the United States.
Questions? Comments? Email the Web editor.
