The task is to explain a complicated world in such a way that people can judge it for themselves.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nPerhaps we underestimated that. Because at the same time, something else happened. News has become a product of the attention economy. A headline no longer competes only with the headline of another newspaper. On my smartphone, it competes with TikTok, Instagram, WhatsApp, football, cat videos, friends, advertising, Netflix, and everything else that would rather not have me think about long-term care insurance right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Numbers support this. The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2026 shows how diverse the paths to news have become. 67 percent of the adult online population in Germany uses news on the internet at least once a week, 36 percent encounter it through social media. Among 18- to 24-year-olds, it's 60 percent; for 17 percent of this age group, social media is even the only way they come into contact with news. At the same time, 59 percent of all respondents regularly watch news on linear television, but only 32 percent among 18- to 24-year-olds. An entire generation is not thus lost to journalism. But the same political reality reaches us today through different access points, selection mechanisms, and sources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, that changes journalism. A headline like \"Pension system on the brink of collapse\" probably works better in this system than: \"Why our pension system is under pressure and what different options exist to respond to it.\" <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first creates a feeling. The second creates knowledge. Both can be journalism. But they are not the same. And perhaps that's exactly part of our problem. Because where knowledge is lacking, space emerges. And someone fills that space. If we don't explain migration in an understandable way, someone explains it on TikTok. If we don't explain the federal budget, a politician explains it in 30 seconds. If we don't explain what a state government can and cannot do with the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, someone explains it\u2014someone who may have an interest in only telling half the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The simplest explanation may not win because people are stupid. But because we failed to provide the understandable explanation beforehand. As I said \u2013 Simplicissimus is no better at the beginning here \u2013 first just a 'rough shot'. And with that, they'll also scare away people who are considering voting for the AfD or have already decided to. Because they don't want to be addressed with such negative associations!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And even those who generally find news important can't always handle this constant appeal. In the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2026, 72 percent say they actively avoid news at least occasionally; at the same time, 90 percent use news multiple times per week. Many don't completely drop out. They skip certain topics or times because crisis reporting exhausts them or affects their mood. Overall trust in news remains stable at 46 percent, while only 13 percent trust news on social media and nearly half worry they can't distinguish facts from misinformation online. We get more information from sources we barely trust ourselves, and we distance ourselves when news overwhelms us. It's precisely in this contradictory space that doubt grows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And at some point a word hangs in the air: fake news. I don't like this term. It is historically burdened and is used as a political slogan to delegitimize journalism on principle. But perhaps we sometimes made it a bit too easy for ourselves to only react with outrage to it. Because what does someone actually mean when they say: \"I no longer believe the media\"? Does he really always mean: \"You're lying?\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or does he sometimes mean: \"My reality doesn't appear in your world. You talk about people like me, but rarely with us. You have your guests, your experts, your capital studios and your panels \u2013 and I don't recognize my life in them. You tell me that my perception is wrong before you've even asked me why I have it.\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The question is not merely rhetorical. The Mainz long-term study on media trust does not conclude for 2024 that Germany has nationwide lost trust in journalism: 47 percent trust the media on important matters, 20 percent distrust them. At the same time, 34 percent see a discrepancy between the social conditions they themselves experience and their portrayal in the media. And media cynicism is growing: One in five now agrees with the statement that the population is systematically lied to by the media; two years earlier it was 14 percent. Also, 20 percent believe that media undermine freedom of opinion. This is not a majority opinion. But it is too much to dismiss it merely as someone else's problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps we need to get down from our high horses and talk to people. Not just those we understand, but especially those we don't understand. And who don't understand us! With the AfD voter. With the Green voter. With the entrepreneur. With the care worker. With the retiree. With the student. With the person with a migration background. With the one who hasn't voted in twenty years. Not as conveniently picturesque protagonists for an already fully formed piece. But because we really want to know what they experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One person who goes exactly there is Marcant from Frankfurt, a law student who has been attending AfD events, far-right demonstrations, and meetings of openly neo-Nazi groups since early 2025. He doesn't just ask people what they believe, but how they came to believe it: What source is behind a claim? What would a demand concretely mean? Does one's own standard still apply when you change perspective? Often contradictions become visible without him having to call them out in the first second. First he asks, then he examines and organizes the material for his videos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Marcant is explicitly not a neutral journalist. He is a political activist with a clear anti-fascist stance; his contributions are curated and edited, and he wants to counter far-right narratives. It would be equally naive to claim that right-wing extremism arises merely from an information gap and disappears as soon as someone explains it patiently enough. Ideology, resentment, belonging, and interests in power cannot be modernized away. But his method contains something that we media professionals should examine more closely: going there, listening, asking about sources of information and ways of thinking, making contradictions visible, and only then contextualizing. Too often we regard such people like a car accident: fascinated, shocked, and with a quick judgment, but without asking ourselves at what point the media, schools, politics, or the state left them alone with their questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That Marcant received the Theodor Heuss Medal in 2026 for this engagement does not automatically make him a model for journalism. And the roughly 500 people who, according to a ZDF report, wrote to him saying they had broken with the far-right scene because of his videos are self-reports and not scientific evidence of impact. Nevertheless, they show that conversation, counter-speech, and clear contextualization can reach people whom traditional media with their formats may no longer be reaching at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
**This explicitly does not mean that journalism must confirm every position.** On the contrary. If a claim is false, it is false. If someone is lying, you must say so. If democratic institutions are attacked, journalism must name it. Fairness does not mean equidistance from the truth. But after a journalistic piece, a person should at least be able to say:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They understood why I think that. They correctly represented my position. They checked what was right about it. And if they disagree with me, I at least understand why. Perhaps this exact feeling has been lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not with everyone. Not everywhere. But with far too many. And we can't blame that solely on people. We bear responsibility for it. By 'we,' I mean by now, quite a lot of people, by the way. Journalists. Broadcasters. Publishers. Producers. YouTubers. Podcasters. Creators. Platforms. Politicians. And eventually us too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because we are long no longer just media consumers. With every share, we become a little bit of a broadcaster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the past, there was usually an editorial office between a political claim and a million people. Today, a share button can lie between them. This also changes responsibility: for the one who sends, for the platform that selects, and for us when we forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But does growing mistrust actually cause people to switch to other \"news\" sources? To some extent, yes, but not as a massive migration. The 2025 Info-Monitor of the media authorities distinguishes between convinced, critical, skeptical, and rejecting groups. 26 percent belong to the skeptical group, seven percent to the rejecting group. Both use search engines, social networks, and so-called alternative media more frequently than people who trust established media. This is a correlation, not yet proof of a simple causal chain. Mistrust can drive people to other sources; these sources can then further reinforce the mistrust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The reach of such offerings is simultaneously easily overestimated. The MoTra Monitor 2024\/25 summarizes 27 studies: Between seven and 17 percent of Germans come into contact with political alternative media at least occasionally; weekly, two to four percent do so. The Monitor's own long-term data show no general increase in far-right alternative media from 2021 to 2025. What is striking is something else. Usage is concentrated among a smaller, but more engaged group. So a mass audience does not automatically become a counter-public. But a relatively small community can be very present if it continuously shares content, comments on it, and carries it into ever new channels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A subculture is created not only through different facts, but through a different relationship to the rest of the public. A DFG-funded qualitative longitudinal study by the Universities of Bremen and Mannheim shows that users of alternative media often consciously understand them as a counterproposal to a supposedly unified \"mainstream\" public sphere. The offer then reads not merely: Here is another piece of news. It reads: We show you what the others are hiding. Those who engage with this get information, but also belonging, common enemies, and the feeling of seeing behind the scenes. In this system, polemics is not an accident. It can be the binding agent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is not controlled by a single secret aggregator. A large portion of political information on social media is absorbed incidentally, not actively sought out. Recommendation systems learn from viewing duration, likes, comments, shared posts, and an account's contacts. Content that provokes outrage or offers a clear friend-enemy narrative has good prospects for this. A study by the State Media Authority NRW of 1,000 posts by political influencers during the 2025 federal election campaign found no clear separation between opinion and information in 59 percent; emotionalization, escalation, and enemy imagery were often part of the pattern. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue observed in a limited TikTok test for the federal election that AfD fan pages were disproportionately represented among the first political videos played. This does not prove widespread manipulation of all feeds. But it shows why we need more insight into recommendation systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What can be done about it? Fact-checks remain necessary, but ultimately often fall short at the end of the chain. Journalism must start earlier: explaining how news comes about, disclosing uncertainty, reflecting lived realities, and being accessible where mistrust grows. Schools and civic education should spend less time having students memorize individual \"correct\" sources and instead practice more in tracing a claim back to its original source, seeking counterevidence, and distinguishing between news, opinion, and campaign. The platforms, in turn, must disclose why content is recommended, make political advertising and its funders traceable, grant researchers access, and offer a non-personalized selection that is easily accessible. The European Digital Services Act creates initial obligations precisely for this. And democratic voices must be present in the same spaces. Not as a copy of polemic, but understandably, persistently, and ready for dialogue. Marcant is not a finished recipe for this. It only shows that you don't win back a public by despising it from the outside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And perhaps that's why we also need to think once more about what public broadcasting could actually mean. Not institutionally. I mean as an idea. Why isn't there a shared space before an election where we first explain things?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let's take migration. And the \u2013 from my personal perspective \u2013 bad habit into which discussions are often steered. How can an actually neutral word be used so misleadingly and in such diverse ways that it suddenly becomes an evaluative component of our language? Before two politicians are let loose on each other, we could spend five minutes explaining: What are we actually talking about? Where does a problem seem to lie \u2013 and where is a problem named that factually perhaps isn't one at all? How many people are we talking about? And what distinguishes them and makes them so conspicuous in the discussion? What does asylum mean? What is labor migration? What is EU freedom of movement? What is family reunification? Which of these are currently being mixed together in political discussion? What decisions can a federal government make? Which ones can't it? What does something cost? What revenues stand against that? Which figures do we know? And which ones don't we?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After that, politicians are free to passionately argue about what they want to change. But we viewers would have gotten something beforehand. A coordinate system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or take taxes. Not first: \"X accuses Y of tax lies.\" Show me three people. 30,000 euros income. 60,000 euros. 120,000 euros. And now show me what the respective proposals mean for these three people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After that, I can decide for myself which proposal I find more just. That would be political education for me, without media becoming teachers. Because actually, the task of media in a democracy is not at all to tell people what they should think. The task is to take some of the work off their hands that is necessary for them to be able to think for themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And there's one more thing to it. Encounter<\/strong>. Our society is increasingly not taking place in a shared media space. We have our feeds. Our groups. Our podcasts. Our creators. Our newspapers. Our truths.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPerhaps one of the most important future tasks of major media is therefore to restore this common space. A place where people of all kinds, origins, and backgrounds, who think completely differently, can at least for a while regard the same reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not so that they subsequently hold the same opinion. That wouldn't be democracy. Democracy is the process by which people who fundamentally disagree with each other can still live together. But for that, they must be able to talk to each other. And for that, they must at least be able to agree on what they're actually arguing about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe that's why this Simplicissimus video occupied me so much. Not because it explained to me whether the AfD is good or evil. But because it posed a question that really should come before any partisan political discussion:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is this Germany, actually, that we want to change with our vote on Sunday? How does it work? What protects our democracy? What can a government change? What is it allowed to change? And where have we decided that it may not? After all, the Basic Law is not an abstract document that is guarded somewhere in Karlsruhe. It is the rule of the game by which we can argue with one another without someone eventually deciding that only his team is allowed to play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps media should explain these rules of the game more often. And then let everyone onto the playing field. Not just those whose opinions we like. First understand. Then argue.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nActually, not a particularly revolutionary idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But perhaps before an election it would already be a pretty good start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sources (as of September 2026)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nReuters Institute Digital News Report 2026 \u2013 Ergebnisse f\u00fcr Deutschland, Leibniz-Institut f\u00fcr Medienforschung | Hans-Bredow-Institut: https:\/\/leibniz-hbi.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AP83_DNR26_Deutschland.pdf | Mainzer Langzeitstudie Medienvertrauen 2024, Johannes Gutenberg-Universit\u00e4t Mainz \/ Heinrich-Heine-Universit\u00e4t D\u00fcsseldorf: https:\/\/medienvertrauen.uni-mainz.de\/files\/2025\/05\/Langzeitstudie-MV-2024.pdf | Info-Monitor 2025, die medienanstalten: https:\/\/www.die-medienanstalten.de\/fileadmin\/user_upload\/die_medienanstalten\/Forschung\/Info-Monitor\/Info-Monitor_2025.pdf | MoTra-Monitor 2024\/25, Abschnitt politische Alternativmedien: https:\/\/www.jura.uni-hamburg.de\/media\/die-fakultaet\/aktuelles\/motra-monitor-2024-25-buch-kemmesies-et-al-2026.pdf | Sch\u00f6ppl\/Schwarzenegger, \u201eGegen\u00f6ffentlichkeit als Gef\u00fchl?\u201c, Publizistik 2025: https:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1007\/s11616-025-00872-z | Landesanstalt f\u00fcr Medien NRW, \u201ePolitical Influencer zwischen Journalismus und Algorithmus\u201c, 2025: https:\/\/www.medienanstalt-nrw.de\/fileadmin\/user_upload\/Forschung\/Sonstiges\/2025_LFM-NRW_Studienbericht_Political_Influencing.pdf | Institute for Strategic Dialogue, TikTok-Empfehlungssysteme vor der Bundestagswahl 2025: https:\/\/www.isdglobal.org\/digital-dispatch\/towards-transparent-recommender-systems-lessons-from-tiktok-research-ahead-of-the-2025-german-federal-election\/ | Europ\u00e4ische Kommission, Digital Services Act und Empfehlungssysteme: https:\/\/germany.representation.ec.europa.eu\/digital-services-act-dsa-eu-regeln-fur-digitale-plattformen-schutz-der-meinungsfreiheit-und-von_de | Tagesspiegel, \u201eMit Nazis spricht man nicht \u2013 oder doch?\u201c, 23.01.2026: https:\/\/www.tagesspiegel.de\/gesellschaft\/mit-nazis-spricht-man-nicht–oder-doch-dieser-youtuber-zeigt-was-es-bringen-kann-15163037.html | ZDF, \u201eMarcant \u2013 Content gegen Rechts\u201c, 05.07.2026: https:\/\/www.zdf.de\/video\/reportagen\/37-grad-leben-102\/marcant–auf-tiktok-gegen-rechts-102 | Theodor-Heuss-Stiftung, Preistr\u00e4ger und Medaillentr\u00e4ger 2026: https:\/\/www.theodor-heuss-stiftung.de\/der-preis\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ich habe diese Woche 44 Minuten lang ein Video \u00fcber die AfD gesehen. Das klingt zun\u00e4chst nicht besonders bemerkenswert und ist ehrlicherweise auch nicht ganz …<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-perspektive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marclepetit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marclepetit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marclepetit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marclepetit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marclepetit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9688"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marclepetit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9691,"href":"https:\/\/marclepetit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9688\/revisions\/9691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marclepetit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marclepetit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marclepetit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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