H: My theory on the Stern article is that the headline writer and the story's author are two different people, and the headline writer didn't understand the story. The story's author says that, with 37 million people, Hispanics are now the largest minority in the USA. Also, they sympathize to some degree with the "illegals."

However, the headline above the paragraph says: "37 Millionen Illegale in den USA". So the writer of the headline states that all Hispanics are illegal, apparently without actually reading the article (or maybe this is some deeply-held belief of the headline writer).

On its face, this doesn't seem like a big deal, but there is a strong pattern of misrepresentation, if not lies, in the German media in stories about America.

For example, the U.S. State Department issued its annual Country Reports on Terrorism, and said "Iraq is not currently a terrorist safe haven." Spiegel Online (SPON) reported this by saying, "Den Irak nennt der Report einen "sicheren Hafen" fuer Terroristen."
Either the SPON writers can't read English, or they are lying to German audiences, or I don't know what...

Another example relates to the Plame/Wilson kerfuffle. The German press agency dpa reported that Bush ordered Libby to leak Plame's name. Which was completely untrue.

P.S. H: Is there any talk among Penn State alumns about the Penn State Censorship Scandal? My favorite bit of irony in the matter is that the professor who censored the artwork wrote an article ten years ago entitled "Fighting censorship in the art classroom."
Now that is funny!

C
- posted by Christoph Roggenkamp @ 5/02/2006 05:22:00 PM