The national news agency Deutsche Presse Agentur and Associated Press remain important sources in journalistic daily business. Deutsche Presse Agentur is a stockholder of 180 media companies, publishers, and broadcasting corporations in Germany. The concentration of publishers is also reflected in the concentration of news agencies. There have been significant mergers of German agencies since the 2011 MDM report. In December 2009, the German agency Deutscher Depeschendienst (ddp), with its customer base of over 350 customers, merged with the Associated Press (AP) and became the DAPD News Agency, in order to acquire an international focus in their news production. DAPD became insolvent in 2012 which, consequently, strengthened the market position for Deutsche Presse Agentur, which has been the main German news agency since then. The interviewees acknowledge the importance of Deutsche Presse Agentur and other news agencies, but made clear that material from news agencies is reviewed by in-house quality checks.
The magazine Stern and others also acquire text and images from quality international papers and print magazines like The New York Times. Content syndication is important both worldwide and within the European context. Content alliances in investigative reporting to create synergies for costly in-depth reporting have been growing. Alliances with external fact-checking units (like Correctiv, a German network for fact-checking and investigative reporting) or international journalism networks (such as the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists – ICIJ), established over the last years, are a new phenomenon to counter false reporting and fake news. For the tabloid Bild–Zeitung, however, the exclusivity of a story is more important:
“Of course […] we can only demand the money from our customers and buyers if the stories […] that they hear, see and read in our shop are already exclusive, i.e. originate from original BILD research. This is not usually possible, not always […]. If we are of the opinion that other stories are so good, so entertaining, so exciting and […] relevant for our readers […], then of course we also report on these stories with reference to the primary source and try to go beyond the research of colleagues and provide added value.”
Only if original research is not possible are other sources used as starting points for further research.
A strength of German media sources is a dense network of foreign correspondents, mostly due to public service broadcasters. ARD has around 100 foreign correspondents in 30 studios around the world (ARD Korrespondentenwelt, n.d.); ZDF has 17 foreign studios (ZDF, n.d.). The network of foreign studios of the commercial RTL Group consists of 24 studios (Deutschlandfunk, 2020).
The interviewees did not mention smaller specialised news agencies like special press services from the churches or the Mediendienst Integration, specialised in topics around Germany’s diverse society, where about a quarter of citizens have a link to migration. The selection of news-making in terms of gender, age, and ethnicity is still a topic of major concern in Germany. Studies show that media content is characterised by poor representation when it comes to Islamic minorities, cultural diversity, and migrants (Hafez, 2009; Hafez & Richter, 2007). News is predominantly in line with news values; source diversity (Napoli, 1999), the diversity of personnel, and sources of news are not prioritised in terms of the above-mentioned categories. What is also worth mentioning here is that newspapers with fewer financial resources tend to unsubscribe to Deutsche Presse Agentur because their service is simply too costly.
Respondents unanimously rejected any significant influence of public relations material on their daily routine work. They say that the amount of such materials is increasing, but very little finds its way into coverage. However, in rare cases, such material triggers further investigations by journalists.
Compared to MDM 2011 (Marcinkowski & Donk, 2011), reservations against cooperating with competing or neighbouring media have dissipated. In Germany, such a network for investigative reporting has been established by the second-biggest newspaper, Süddeutsche, together with the public service broadcasters WDR and NDR (Rechercheverbund). While such cooperation has duplicating effects for the audience when national media are involved, it may increase the diversity of sources when international networks are established. One such example is the Panama Papers, which had been analysed by the Rechercheverbund in cooperation with the ICIJ.
