Mer om Kronen Zeitung.Pirre skrev:Andreas, du sa att artiklarna var hämtade ur "Die Kronen Zeitung" - vad för slags tidning är detta, en österrikisk DN/SvD?
Österrike har en något egenartad dagspressituation. Först och främst finns där bara 17 dagstidningar, vilket är väldigt få för att vara en modern demokrati. Sverige har t ex flera gånger fler (jag har inga aktuella siffror, men jag kommer på betydligt fler än 17 bara på minnet). Detta gör att de tidningar som finns får en väldigt stor genomslagskraft. Kronen Zeitung har en upplaga på drygt 1 miljon, av hela dagspressens 3 miljoner. Tillsammans med Täglich Alles (ca 1/2 miljon), har den studerats i en avhandling av Elisabeth Stúr, journalist och forskare vid institutionen för journalistik, medier och kommunikation, som liknar dessa båda ledande, högerpopulistiska, tidningar vid Hänt i Veckan, vad gäller snuttifierning av nyhetsskrivning, och stor mängd skvaller, matrecept och kändisreportage. Det faktum att de på sin nätupplaga enbart koncentrerat sig på det veckotidningsartade kan man ju tycka vara ett oroande tecken.
Det är mycket möjligt att KZ i Österrike anses vara en respektabel tidning, men jag vill ändå komplettera bilden med några citat från en artikel ur Financial Times (som knappast kan beskyllas för att "ligga på vänsterkanten") om Kronen Zeitung, och som tycks motsvara ungefär den internationella bilden av tidningen:
HANS DICHAND: Controversial voice of media
by Eric Frey
Austria has the newspaper with the largest readership in the world in relation to its population. The Kronen-Zeitung, a mass-market tabloid, is read every day by 42 per cent of Austrians, and, amazingly, this share is still growing.
The paper is popular among blue collar workers and managers alike: it is read by senior citizens and students, in urban areas and the countryside. Its circulation is about one million a day.
From the outside, the success of the Kronen-Zeitung is hard to comprehend. Compared to Germany's Bild or Britain's Sun, the Krone is often conventional and even old-fashioned. True, it features a nude model on page five and is strong on crime and gory stories, but it mostly carries stories from every-day life and information that readers can use. What makes the Krone exceptional is the ability of its long-time owner and publisher, Hans Dichand, to read the public mood and sometimes shape it according to his own preconceptions.
In recent years, this has made the Krone a loud voice against immigration, minorities and social liberalism which helped the rise of the far-right Freedom party of Jörg Haider.
And given Austria's longstanding tradition of anti-semitism, the Krone often finds itself under criticism for fostering anti-Jewish sentiments itself. In the 1970s, it published an extensive series by a right-wing journalist about the "Jews in Austria", which suggested that Jews were responsible for their persecution.
When former UN secretary-general and then presidential candidate, Kurt Waldheim, was accused of lying about his role as a German officer in the Balkans during the second world war, the Krone spearheaded a nationalistic backlash against what was depicted as a slanderous foreign campaign against Mr Waldheim and the Austrian people.
The daily "Staberl" column of the Krone's most prominent writer, Richard Nimmerrichter, often appears to minimise the Holocaust and the responsibility of Austrians for the crimes against the Jews.
The Krone also tends to whip up emotions against the substantial foreign population in Austria and has often used racist language to depict Africans as drug dealers and criminals. Political leaders who fight for tolerance and cultural diversity get ruthlessly attacked in the tabloid paper.
[...]
The Krone strongly campaigned for Austria's entry into the European Union before the referendum in 1994, even though many of the paper's readers were outright sceptical. The newspaper also wrote in favour of monetary union and has generally taken the side of the governing coalition of Chancellor Viktor Klima. At the same time, its often crude messages usually resemble those of Mr Haider.
[...]
For Mr Klima, the Krone's support carried a price. Particularly on immigration policy and on cultural affairs, his government often appeared to fulfill Mr Dichand's demands. This has made many intellectuals turn away from the Social Democrats and may have weakened the party's resistance against Mr Haider's rhetoric.
Mr Dichand, a passionate art collector, himself denies any political schemes or influence. The Krone just writes what people like to read, he says. Profit-making has certainly been the overriding motive ever since Mr Dichand founded the Kronen-Zeitung with the help of trade union funds.
Before that, he was one of those young journalists who, after 1945, stepped into the void left by the destruction of Jewish intellectual life and the ban on many war-time journalists who had been close to the Nazi regime. He quickly rose up the career ladder, became editor-in-chief, first, of Kleine Zeitung, a regional paper in southern Austria, and later of Kurier, a large Vienna daily. But only the Kronen-Zeitung gave him the chance to realise his enterpreneurial goals.
