Anyway, I am using a bit of a blunt instrument to get at something a little more subtle: a demonstration of the cliches that western Germans tend to hold about the US, and an example of how they are both formed and confirmed.

It’s not even really necessary for FAZ readers to be foolish or gullible (on which point I am agnostic) or to take Gelisky seriously, but if their mental catalog of America already runs along lines of fat, gun-wielding, Jesus-besotted, money-grubbing, niekulturalny, death-penalty-supporting, environment-destroying dummies, then the stream of Gelinsky headlines gets slotted into that picture pretty readily. And I’m sure those readers would swear to not holding anti-American views.

Finally, if Gelinsky is not taken seriously, why is she there? Surely Washington is a bit of a plum posting and any number of German journalists would be thrilled to write about America for the FAZ. I mean, it’s a bigger audience than, say, the Oberarschheim Kurier-Anzeiger, no? If Gelinsky’s serving the readers poorly and taking up space, that’s a problem easily solved.

Sean

Gelinsky is quite different, and I would agree with the parallel about the eXile’s complaints. She writes about the US as if it was supposed to be Germany, and for some incomprehensible reason isn’t.

Yes, absolutely right. (Very sorry to agree so much). The point of much of foreign reporting is not really to tell your audience at home about what the other place “really” is like, it is rather to compare it to home and to put the “foreign” place into a domestic perspective.

This is also why some foreign reporters are actually much better at writing about their home countries from abroad than they are at writing about abroad for their home audience.

Of course, the problem is that the vast majority will never know this. I think you have to have lived abroad for a couple of years to appreciate this and actually read different newspapers from different countries.

One of the things that makes the FAZ case so interesting is the contrast. Rueb (Rüb, if your browser doesn’t choke on umlauts) is so very good. He explains America to a German audience; the US that he portrays is one that I recognize, even as I see it described in a German newspaper.

Gelinsky is quite different, and I would agree with the parallel about the eXile’s complaints. She writes about the US as if it was supposed to be Germany, and for some incomprehensible reason isn’t. It’s as if the reporter for the Washington Post were constantly writing wondering why German politics don’t revolve around gun control, abortion, tax cuts and fear of teh gay.

I’d agree with David, too (is all this agreeing going to kill the thread?), that the bias is not organized. In this case, it’s both a product of widespread views among west Germans and a powerful megaphone reinforcing those views. I don’t imagine that holding it up to ridicule will produce much change, but it still pleases me to do so.

Today’s story, btw, is about how few people interred at Guantanamo were actually fighters. It’s an important story, but as it joins the long line of Guantanamo stories she has written (a category I admit I forgot), it misses getting linked to either 1) overall GWB administration incompetence or 2) executive power grab by same, and thus simply comes across as “nyah nyah, we were right all along about Guantanamo.” Thus both playing on and building stereotypes.

You can do the same for The Economist and several German newspapers. There are always one or two trend-setting articles in each issue of the Economist, or surprising statistics etc, you can be pretty sure that next day some German newspapers will carry similar stories.

(I have experienced this first-hand for a few years when I was a subscriber of both Economist and Sueddeutsche Zeitung; the SZ’s economics columnist would pretty much every week steal at least one idea from the Economist).

Foreign correspondent bias is hardly organized, it’s caused by a confuence of stuff.