Germany has had a press council since 1956 and a press code since 1973, which functions as the overall ethical guidelines for journalism in all media. A press complaint commission is hosted by the press council, which judges complaints that anybody can submit. In 2018, there were 2,038 complaints, 245 sanctions, and 28 reprimands. Some scholars criticise the press council for not being well known among the general public, while others claim their judgments are not effective enough. However, all interviewed journalists except one and the journalists’ trade unions claim they know the press code and respect it and that it is important in its guiding quality. They say, “The press code is self-evident, lived practice, and gives rise to debate, for example on the issue of the naming of ethnic or national provenance”.
The results of a representative online survey from 2010 (Reinemann, 2010) show that only half of the surveyed journalists admit that they think the measures of the Press Council would affect the actions of editorial offices. The reason is that there are neither economic nor publicity incentives to act accordingly. Nevertheless, three-quarters of surveyed journalists think that the press council is relevant for their work.
All of our interviewees report the clause about the naming of ethnic or national provenance as an important example when they consult the press code. This is due to a highly controversial issue a mass sexual offence by hundreds of migrants that took place on New Year’s Eve 2015, and the media did not report the provenance of the offenders because they lacked information from the police for the first few days after this event (Haarhoff, 2020). Other significant topics where the press code is consulted comprise questions of human dignity, reporting suicide, privacy, the right to one’s own image, and so on.
The representative of the journalists’ union bears in mind that journalists cannot always achieve what the press code calls for. However, it remains well suited to describe professional ethics in the near future. In recent years, there has been increased sensitivity for the application of the press code of ethics. It is not the number of cases of reprimands that is decisive, but the application of the code in a broader sense. A representative from a journalists’ union suggests that journalists in start-ups and those who have not gone through a journalistic education are alien to the press code, creating issues.
