Media Criticism: When FAZ holds the microphone for the USA - and Germany remains speechless

It's a remarkable spectacle when one of Germany's largest daily newspapers documents a broadside from Washington - and essentially just lets it stand as is. The latest human rights report from the US State Department attests to Germany having "serious human rights violations" and thus portrays the Federal Republic as worse than El Salvador.

https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/usa-unter-trump/usa-werfen-deutschland-schwere-menschenrechtsverstoesse-vor-110635582.html

Rubio probably wrote this report personally - after calling up Weidel and Höcke to get some snappy formulations from them. This is not only diplomatic dynamite, but obvious in its political direction. Yet instead of dissecting these attacks substantively, FAZ chooses the path of least resistance in its report: The accusations are presented, garnished with a few formulaic defensive quotes from Berlin - and thus remain hanging in the public space, as if carved in marble. There would be plenty of material for a well-founded counter-investigation. The US assessment relies on "credible reports" without providing evidence for them. Where are these reports actually? From Dr. Mabuse's secret archive? Or did an intern scrape them together during a quick call to NIUS? It's getting really embarrassing now. It adopts the long-since refuted, populist spin that "mass immigration" is a main driver of antisemitism in Germany - a narrative that has been circulating in far-right circles for years. It conceals that the drastic downgrading of Germany and the conspicuous upgrading of El Salvador stand in striking lockstep with the political agenda of the Trump administration, which is deliberately building pressure on liberal democracies in Europe. All of this would be explainable and provable - yet it remains unmentioned in the reporting.

What remains is the impression of a German leading media landscape that prefers to take dictation rather than counter in international power games. Anyone who gives space to a politically motivated US report in this way, without dismantling its weak evidence base and partisan bias, doesn't seem like a critical guardian of democracy, but like a willing amplifier of foreign propaganda. Backbone would look different. It would mean offensively defending one's own democratic standards - not just with a quote like "This is a free country," but with hard facts, clear comparisons, and the ruthless analysis of how and why the USA shapes Germany into an enemy image in this report. Everything else is silence in the pose of journalism. And what really gets on investigative journalists' nerves about such pseudo-journalism: These media outlets also get paid for it - probably exactly 30 pieces of silver. FAZ maintains a correspondent office in Washington, D.C. - precisely there where the author of this article has her workplace. One inevitably wonders what has happened. Perhaps they simply haven't let her out anymore, because everything is supposed to be so "humane" in the United States, or is she still looking for the State Department's Office of Human Rights, yes, that will be hard to find...

This is what real democracy looks like with friendly greetings from Union Station - We'll surely run into each other here sometime Maybe we should treat FAZ to a little excursion - down to El Salvador, where we've been often enough - and explain to them there during a nice prison yard walk what "political hospitality - made in USA" really means. After that, one could put them at Union Station in Washington, with a big sign in hand: "Trump is not my president." And then, yes then, the FAZ scribbler gets to experience how quickly one trades their workplace for a cell in America. The columns are then written from US prison - but don't worry: Freedom of opinion in the USA is, as everyone knows, "very high." Laughable. And dear FAZ, in Washington - this is not the American version of medieval festivals, but this is what it looks like when human rights are trampled underfoot.

Investigative journalism requires courage, conviction – and your support.