How to manipulate the masses
I'm getting political rather often lately ... but I can't help myself. And here we go again.
I don't know if you read any of it in your newspapers, or if you paid attention to the story: the scandal around the fraudulent doctoral thesis of the German defense minister.
I noticed in the online version of the Guardian that they had only a very brief version of it, that did not even come close to giving a true picture of what's been going on here.
Well, lately an academic, who was supposed to write a review of this doctoral thesis, found out that said thesis contained several quotes from other authors that were not marked as such. He found that odd and passed the news to a newspaper. Said newspaper published it, and published the affected pages of the thesis and the original sources as well (so their readers could see for themselves). Still the allegedly "oh-so-popular" defense minister had the fucking nerve to call the accusations absurd. That was Wednesday last week.
And then all hell broke loose on the German part of the internet.
The forums of the German newspaper websites were practically exploding with discussions. New entrys came so fast it was practically impossible to read them all. For one page you read two new ones got written. Most writers were thoroughly pissed off by Guttenberg's obvious lies and his manoevering.
Someone, stirred up by the minister's arrogant reaction, put up a website where he put the thesis online and called for helpers who would check for plagiarized texts. He got so many volunteers that he had to switch the website to a "wiki"-account to handle the traffic, and together they dug up a much bigger load of shit that anyone would have expected. Within a few days they found out that more than two thirds(!) of the pages contained plagiarized material! And they had only checked out material that was available online ...
What they also found out was that a lot of the plagiarized parts had undergone minor changes in the wording (add a word here, change another word there) ... but still the minister only admitted that he might have made a few mistakes, but that he had not deliberately cheated (despite the increasingly overwhelming evidence towards the opposite). In a press conference that let in only a few selected journalists, and kept most of the more critically minded journalists out. :-PPP
That was last week on Friday.
Over the weekend lots of jokes on this minister came up on the web (especially on twitter). Peopole wondered loudly whom he would misuse as a scapegoat and sack this time (that's his usual strategy for hiding his own mistakes), and that it should probably be his ghostwriter for the thesis. He got renamed "Googleberg", and on his Wikipedia entry someone added "Xerox" as an additional forename. On ebay someone offered a "special Guttenberg edition" for a computer keyboard, with all keys removed except for those for "mark all" and "copy & paste". On the amazon page for his published thesis several mock reviews got published, with remarks like "makes it seem like you heard many different voices" and "you cold almost get the impression he had written it himself".
And no, these things don't usually happen on the German language internet.
Well, this week he admitted a few more mistakes and that he might have been "overextended" when he wrote his thesis, his political party closed ranks around him, claiming he still did an excellent job as minister, and he lost his title as "Dr.". But he remained defense minister. Allegedly he was still as popular as before, opinion polls got published that stated that more than 80% of all Germans still wanted him in that position. A "pro Guttenberg" facebook initiative got mind-numbing numbers of "like" nominations in a surprisingly short time.
I began to seriously wonder about my fellow citizens. :-P
I detest that man. He is what we call a "Blender" in German, someone who is all shiny facade with no substance behind. And he's a liar and a cheat. If his doctoral thesis was "overextending" him, then how could he possibly be suited for the demands of the position of a defense minister? And when had he ever been "excellent" in this job? Nobody could really tell, his supporters just claimed the he was, but they could never tell exactly what he had allegedly done so well.
But I wasn't alone with these thoughts. Because other opinion polls, those on the websites of the more critically minded newspapers, got opposite results, people in the newspaper forums were wondering aloud how such different results could happen. Some journalists followed this lead - and found out that:
* the only ones stating that Guttenberg was still popular were the newspaper "Bild" (worst tabloid imaginable) and other products of the Springer publishing company, and Guttenberg's own political party; "Bild" had always been Guttenberg's preferred medium
* the guy who had started the facebook campaign is closely associated wih the "Bild" newspaper
* at least some of the facebook users who had "liked" the pro Guttenberg campaign turned out to be faked accounts (using word by word the same replies etc.)
* "Bild" got an exclusive contract for a series of pro-army adverts
Conspiracy theories anyone?
If anything good came out of this mess it is the rebirth of investigative journalism (and I believe that the Wikileaks affairs last year acted as a midwife, it reminded many journalists of what their job is for).
And a lot of good laughs.
I don't know if you read any of it in your newspapers, or if you paid attention to the story: the scandal around the fraudulent doctoral thesis of the German defense minister.
I noticed in the online version of the Guardian that they had only a very brief version of it, that did not even come close to giving a true picture of what's been going on here.
Well, lately an academic, who was supposed to write a review of this doctoral thesis, found out that said thesis contained several quotes from other authors that were not marked as such. He found that odd and passed the news to a newspaper. Said newspaper published it, and published the affected pages of the thesis and the original sources as well (so their readers could see for themselves). Still the allegedly "oh-so-popular" defense minister had the fucking nerve to call the accusations absurd. That was Wednesday last week.
And then all hell broke loose on the German part of the internet.
The forums of the German newspaper websites were practically exploding with discussions. New entrys came so fast it was practically impossible to read them all. For one page you read two new ones got written. Most writers were thoroughly pissed off by Guttenberg's obvious lies and his manoevering.
Someone, stirred up by the minister's arrogant reaction, put up a website where he put the thesis online and called for helpers who would check for plagiarized texts. He got so many volunteers that he had to switch the website to a "wiki"-account to handle the traffic, and together they dug up a much bigger load of shit that anyone would have expected. Within a few days they found out that more than two thirds(!) of the pages contained plagiarized material! And they had only checked out material that was available online ...
What they also found out was that a lot of the plagiarized parts had undergone minor changes in the wording (add a word here, change another word there) ... but still the minister only admitted that he might have made a few mistakes, but that he had not deliberately cheated (despite the increasingly overwhelming evidence towards the opposite). In a press conference that let in only a few selected journalists, and kept most of the more critically minded journalists out. :-PPP
That was last week on Friday.
Over the weekend lots of jokes on this minister came up on the web (especially on twitter). Peopole wondered loudly whom he would misuse as a scapegoat and sack this time (that's his usual strategy for hiding his own mistakes), and that it should probably be his ghostwriter for the thesis. He got renamed "Googleberg", and on his Wikipedia entry someone added "Xerox" as an additional forename. On ebay someone offered a "special Guttenberg edition" for a computer keyboard, with all keys removed except for those for "mark all" and "copy & paste". On the amazon page for his published thesis several mock reviews got published, with remarks like "makes it seem like you heard many different voices" and "you cold almost get the impression he had written it himself".
And no, these things don't usually happen on the German language internet.
Well, this week he admitted a few more mistakes and that he might have been "overextended" when he wrote his thesis, his political party closed ranks around him, claiming he still did an excellent job as minister, and he lost his title as "Dr.". But he remained defense minister. Allegedly he was still as popular as before, opinion polls got published that stated that more than 80% of all Germans still wanted him in that position. A "pro Guttenberg" facebook initiative got mind-numbing numbers of "like" nominations in a surprisingly short time.
I began to seriously wonder about my fellow citizens. :-P
I detest that man. He is what we call a "Blender" in German, someone who is all shiny facade with no substance behind. And he's a liar and a cheat. If his doctoral thesis was "overextending" him, then how could he possibly be suited for the demands of the position of a defense minister? And when had he ever been "excellent" in this job? Nobody could really tell, his supporters just claimed the he was, but they could never tell exactly what he had allegedly done so well.
But I wasn't alone with these thoughts. Because other opinion polls, those on the websites of the more critically minded newspapers, got opposite results, people in the newspaper forums were wondering aloud how such different results could happen. Some journalists followed this lead - and found out that:
* the only ones stating that Guttenberg was still popular were the newspaper "Bild" (worst tabloid imaginable) and other products of the Springer publishing company, and Guttenberg's own political party; "Bild" had always been Guttenberg's preferred medium
* the guy who had started the facebook campaign is closely associated wih the "Bild" newspaper
* at least some of the facebook users who had "liked" the pro Guttenberg campaign turned out to be faked accounts (using word by word the same replies etc.)
* "Bild" got an exclusive contract for a series of pro-army adverts
Conspiracy theories anyone?
If anything good came out of this mess it is the rebirth of investigative journalism (and I believe that the Wikileaks affairs last year acted as a midwife, it reminded many journalists of what their job is for).
And a lot of good laughs.