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Abstract
The present essay will examine the practice of media steering in the GDR to demonstrate how newspapers were used as tools of political public relations. In the struggle to achieve recognition from the population and the outside world, the GDR regime suppressed any information that might prove harmful to its own interests. This theoretical approach and the results of the present study contradict previous research that largely draws on theories about propaganda and totalitarianism, and conclude that the press in the GDR was monotonous, uniform and lacking in informational content.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 See ‘Radio Wars: Broadcasting during the Cold War’, Special Issue: Cold War History 13, no. 2 (2013): 145–275; A. Ross Johnson and R. Eugene Parta, eds., Cold War Broadcasting: Impact on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. A Collection of Studies and Documents (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2010); Michael Meyen and Ute Nawratil, ‘The Viewers: Television and Everyday Life in East Germany’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 24, no. 3 (2004): 355–64; Claudia Dittmar, ‘GDR Television in Competition with West German Programming’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 24, no. 3 (2004): 327–43; James Schwoch, ‘Cold War Telecommunications Strategy and the Question of German Television’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 21, no. 2 (2001): 109–21.
2 Klaus Merten, ‘Progress in Public Relations by Improving Controlling and Measurement’, paper presented to the 12th International Public Relations Research Symposium Public Relations Metrics: Evaluation and Measurement, 1–3 July 2005, Lake Bled, Slovenia, http://www.bledcom.si/_files/330/klaus_merten.pdf, [accessed 6 March 2014]; Idem, ‘Zur Definition von Public Relations,’ Medien und Kommunikationswissenschaft 56, no. 1 (2008): 42–59.
3 Anke Fiedler, Medienlenkung in der DDR (Cologne: Böhlau, 2014).
4 Michael Meyen and Anke Fiedler, ‘Totalitäre Vernichtung der politischen Öffentlichkeit? Tageszeitungen und Kommunikationsstrukturen in der DDR’, in Wie im Westen, nur anders. Medien in der DDR, ed. Stefan Zahlmann (Berlin: Panama, 2010), 35–59.
5 Gunter Holzweißig, Massenmedien in der DDR (Berlin: Holzapfel, 1983), 15, 21; Gunter Holzweißig, Zensur ohne Zensor. Die SED-Informationsdiktatur (Bonn: Bouvier, 1997).
6 Elisabeth M. Herrmann, ‘Grundzüge der marxistisch-leninistischen Pressetheorie. Funktionsbestimmung der Presse in der marxistisch-leninistischen Ideologie’, Publizistik 5 (1960): 225–42.
7 Dominic Boyer, Spirit and System: Media, Intellectuals, and the Dialectic in Modern German Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 128.
8 Jürgen Wilke, ‘Medien DDR’, in Fischer Lexikon Publizistik Massenkommunikation, ed. Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann et al. (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 2009), 235–63; Klaus Arnold, ‘Propaganda als ideologische Kommunikation’, Publizistik 48 (2003): 63–82; Maryellen Boyle, Capturing Journalism: Press and Politics in East Germany, 1945–1991 (San Diego: University of California, 1992).
9 Boyer, Spirit and System, 122–3.
10 Konrad H. Jarausch, ‘Beyond Uniformity: The Challenge of Historicizing the GDR’, in Dictatorship as Experience: Towards a Socio-Cultural History of the GDR, ed. Konrad H. Jarausch (New York: Berghahn Books, 1999), 3–14.
11 Wilfried Scharf, ‘Zur Berichterstattung des Neuen Deutschland über den Abschuß einer südkoreanischen Passagiermaschine im Sommer 1983’, Publizistik 29 (1984): 492–502.
12 Wilfried Scharf, Das Bild der Bundesrepublik in den Massenmedien der DDR. Eine empirische Untersuchung von Tageszeitungen, Hörfunk und Fernsehen (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1985).
13 Michael Meyen and Anke Fiedler, ‘Journalists in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). A collective biography’, Journalism Studies 14, no. 3 (2013): 321–35; Michael Meyen, Denver Clan und Neues Deutschland. Mediennutzung in der DDR (Berlin: Christoph Links, 2003).
14 Frank Bösch, Mediengeschichte (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2011), 197.
15 Konrad Dussel, Deutsche Tagespresse im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Münster: Lit, 2011), 201.
16 Merten, ‘Progress in Public Relations’; Merten, ‘Zur Definition von Public Relations’.
17 Thomas Lindenberger, ‘Tacit Minimal Consensus: The Always Precarious East German Dictatorship’, in Popular Opinion in Totalitarian Regimes: Fascism, Nazism, Communism, ed. Paul Corner (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 208–222.
18 Christoph Classen, ‘Captive audience? GDR Radio in the Mirror of Listeners' Mail’, Cold War History, 13, no. 2 (2013): 239–54.
19 Holzweißig, Zensur ohne Zensor, 9–11.
20 Randall L. Bytwerk, ‘The Failure of the Propaganda of the German Democratic Republic’, Quarterly Journal of Speech 85 (1999): 400–16.
21 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Meridian, 1958).
22 Carl J. Friedrich and Zbigniews K. Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965).
23 Arnold, ‘Propaganda als ideologische Kommunikation’.
24 Christoph Classen, ‘Thoughts on the Significance of Mass-Media Communications in the Third Reich and the GDR,’ Totalitarian Movements and Political Regimes 8 (2007): 547–62.
25 Merten, ‘Progress in Public Relations’, 14.
26 Merten, ‘Zur Definition von Public Relations’, 55.
27 Merten, ‘Progress in Public Relations’, 8.
28 Ibid., 14.
29 Ibid.
30 Helga Haftendorn, Coming of Age: German Foreign Policy since 1945 (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2006), 127.
31 Ulrich van der Heyden, GDR International Development Policy Involvement. Doctrine and Strategies between Illusions and Reality 1960–1990. The Example of (South) Africa (Münster: Lit, 2013), 36–41.
32 Haftendorn, Coming of Age.
33 Fiedler, Medienlenkung in der DDR, 99–104.
34 Boyer, Spirit and System, 133.
35 Ulrich Bürger, Das sagen wir natürlich so nicht! Donnerstag-Argus bei Herrn Geggel (Berlin: Dietz, 1990).
36 Fiedler, Medienlenkung in der DDR, 104–9.
37 Meyen, Denver Clan und Neues Deutschland, 118–9.
38 Arne Kapitza, Transformation der ostdeutschen Presse. ‘Berliner Zeitung’, ‘Junge Welt’ und ‘Sonntag/Freitag’ im Prozeß der deutschen Vereinigung (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1997), 74.
39 Friedhelm Tiemeyer, ‘Eine Spur ausführlicher. Ein Vergleich zwischen der SED-Presse und den Zeitungen der Blockparteien,’ medium 2 (1986): 25–6.
40 Meyen, Denver Clan und Neues Deutschland, 120–1.
41 Boyer, Spirit and System, 128.
42 Denis Fengler, ‘Westdeutsche Korrespondenten in der DDR’, in Journalisten und Journalismus in der DDR, ed. Jürgen Wilke (Cologne: Böhlau, 2007), 79–216.
43 Heinz Niemann, Hinterm Zaun. Politische Kultur und Meinungsforschung in der DDR – die geheimen Berichte an das Politbüro der SED (Berlin: Edition Ost, 1995).
44 Meyen, Denver Clan und Neues Deutschland.
45 Ina Merkel and Felix Mühlberg, ‘Eingaben und Öffentlichkeit’, in Wir sind doch nicht die Meckerecke der Nation! Briefe an das Fernsehen der DDR, ed. Ina Merkel, (Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, 2000), 11–46.
46 Felix Mühlberg, Bürger, Bitten und Behörden. Geschichte der Eingabe in der DDR, (Berlin: Dietz, 2004), 233.
47 Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism; Friedrich and Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Anke Fiedler
Anke Fiedler (2012 Dr. phil., University of Munich) is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Brussels. Her research interests include media and communication history, media structures, and journalism. Email: [email protected]
Michael Meyen
Michael Meyen (1995 Dr. phil., University of Leipzig) is a full professor of communication at the University of Munich. His research interests include journalism, communication history, communication as a field, and media usage. Email: [email protected]