Fritz Pleitgen
President of WDR, Germany
  

Ladies and Gentlemen,

in times of peace and in a democratically and pluralistically developed society, where human and civil rights are largely protected and guaranteed, the journalist has a relatively easy although responsible task. It often becomes difficult and dangerous when he is to report in and about very unstable situations, under authoritarian regimes, amidst of crises, conflicts or even war.

Humanism, as I define it, is an intellectual-moral attitude with the aim of an understanding and pacified civilization, in which all good forces of mankind and of the peoples can develop in mutual respect and solidarity.

What can journalists and mass media contribute to this aim? Well, they organize ways of communication and transport information, ideas and values, which help to form the identity of people and cultures and express them. This is an important social and cultural task. It is the more important as, in the meantime, mass media have become the prevalent source of information and participation in social life worldwide.

More and more people spend an increasing time of their life by consuming the media. It already starts in the phase of childhood and youth, when the personality is easily formed. It influences their picture of the world and of mankind. Often it is not the personal reality one lived through but the transmitted, selected and shaped view of reality, which determines the public and private consciousness.

At the same time, the traditional institutions, which form mankind, are loosing their importance: Family, School, Church; their influential role is diminishing at least in the affluent areas of the world. Families shrink and fall apart. School is often overwhelmed by the problems. It becomes more and more difficult for the churches to make themselves understood. � Mass media contribute to this phenomena considerably. Their omnipresence, their manic promises of happiness, and their often easy-going stories rock old certainties and handed-down values, including, of course, those which would have needed questioning a long time ago.

The social responsibility of the media must become visible in journalistic and entrepreneurial ethics. For this obligation, there is no difference between public or commercial media. However, the reality is different, as we all know. Where information and opinion is to increase economic profit, especially in the area of the electronic mass media, terms such as impartiality, balance, journalistic accuracy, etc. get soft contours. There are reasons for that. Such media orientate themselves much more on the expectations and emotions of their customers. This is what makes public media indispensable. We experience that in times of war and crisis. When things matter, people place much more trust in politically and economically independent media.

Journalism needs independence, if it is to accomplish its task. In times of war, this independence is severely threatened. Free flow of information and truth are always the first victims of war.

The concentration of ways of communication and the technical revolution allow good and quick coverage as never before in the history of mankind. Paradoxically, however, it also allows governments and parties at war to restrict and suppress journalistic investigation as never before. "Clean" wars with "surgical" strikes are led, remote-controlled and seemingly without people. No journalist is allowed near the people concerned and the real action on the battlefields. In press conferences at the main headquarters, they are fed with information, which can hardly be distinguished from propaganda. Thus, the "embedded" journalists become part of the information war and belong to the arsenals of the parties at war. Since they do not have access to any other sources, they are rather combatants than critical observers.

Danger lurks also where journalists are to be made instruments for the well-intended objectives of humanitarian organizations along the lines of "political correctness". It is their task to perceive as many relevant facts as possible in a given situation. If they themselves are on the barricades, on which they are to report, their view could be distorted.

"I do not hate anybody", Elias Canetti wrote in his diary, "the least my enemy". Of all the people, he does not want to submit to him. The person who replies to a hit only by hitting, submits to the rules of the assailant. (The real pacifist is the perfect "non-leader" of war. He does not fight for peace. He has peace.)

The ancient Greeks told the story of a man who went to war with the others, only armed with a bow, but without arrows. "Which arrows are you going to use?" his comrades asked. "No problem" he said, "I'll take the arrows the enemy shoots at me" � "You are crazy!" they mocked him. "What are you going to do, if he does not shoot any?" � "Then, I do not need any myself".

The journalist does not stand on the barricade of this or that party. His barricade is the untiring search for truth. He always looks at and listens to the other side, too. And very often, there is also a third side.

By doing that, he serves a higher interest, which allows the voter and the political decision makers to gather a realistic picture of the situation and to decide reasonably.

But what does reason mean? - War starts in the heads and hearts of the people. Long before the first shot is fired, it has taken shape in the consciousness of politicians, generals, and peoples. Its logic penetrates everyday life. It uses the passions of people, their diffused fears, their antiquated concept of honour, their ignorance, their incapability to forget suffered injustice, their missing willingness to solve conflicts without violence. War even uses their religion to disguise its real objectives.

There are many different kinds of modern wars. Industrial nations lead war against developing countries. Plutocrats plunder the ordinary people. Dictators lead war against their own people. Fanatic fundamentalists attack pragmatists able to compromise. The die-hard reactionaries fight the future. Unscrupulous and short-sighted profiteers fight nature, the environment and the Creation.

Nothing of this is demonic fate. Everything is "home-made"�. It is based on errors and weaknesses and could be avoided. Because wars behave just as fire and every little fireman knows how to handle it. Three factors must meet to kindle a fire: fuel, oxygen and a spark. The person, who wants to prevent fire catastrophes should see to it that few fuel is collected. He should do everything to prevent a spark and if there is a fire he should not blow into it, but quench the fire as soon as possible.

What do the media have to do with it? Quite a lot, I believe.

We know and experience that every day: A determined demagogue with access to the mass media can stir up a peaceful country, wreck its good institutions, make its neighbours suspicious and drive them into a spiral of violence. He can pile up a lot of fuel and can ignite many sparks. Media can prepare, trigger, fire up and prolong conflicts. Therefore, they can also stop, cool down and shorten them.

A free and responsibly acting press can contribute a lot to a peaceful development of the national and international community. It can and must investigate and inform to transmit a realistic picture of the situation to the citizens. It can and must oppose a concept of the enemy by promoting encounter and dialogue, by formulating mutual interests and objectives and by opening up alternatives. The press can and must tell stories, which reach and touch the people in a deeper and longer lasting way than reasons and political facts can do. It can and must control its own language to prevent the vision of a good future from becoming incredible through the violent vocabulary of the past. And again and again, it has to unmask ideological simplifications and confront them with real life. Can't all the parties in conflict in this world say to each other, just as Shakespeare�s fourteen-year-old Julia formulated so desperately, truly and accurately:

'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;

Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.

What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,

Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part

Belonging to a man.

A free and responsible press exercises the art of remembrance and the art of forgetting. It collects and secures painful experiences, contemplates the guilt of the past, but as something we owe to the future. It does not have the right to block the road into a better future forever.

Peace, which is only based on reason may succeed when the passions are tired of themselves. In the end, is reason not the weariness of passions, and thus at best subsequent reason? The real peacemakers were always those, which denied the logic of war. The religions are rich in experiences and people who, in view of the greatness and all-embracing love of their God, were able to overcome their own nature and to break the vicious circles. Aren't the religious communities "media", too? Bearers of a message, narrators of stories, designers of the unspeakable? Isn't it their task, too, to lift up the people instead of crushing them, to widen their view instead of narrowing it, to encourage them to life instead of death - or even killing?

I know. All peace makers encounter the question about the aggressive nature of man. Isn't war really the "father of all things"? Will fight and competition, mistrust and protectionism, threat and fear not render coexistence of the people and peoples into "a living against each other" for all times? � I always think of a small story, which could be written in a similar way in the books of wisdom of all religions and I would like to make the mass media staff take it to their hearts:

In the morning, the master and his student were sitting in the garden and listened to the polyphonic chirping of the birds. "No reason for romantic feelings", the student said because it was a modern and open-minded young man. "This means only: This is my territory. Get out! � Woe to you, if you come too close! � Birds are only humans, too.� � The master listened to him patiently. He nodded a little, but then he winked: "Maybe you are right", he said with a gentle smile, "but they do it by singing!"