Overall, the three guests agreed that the Luxembourg authorities are struggling to gather data and use it properly as well as to share information with the media and the public.
Kurschat, journalist with the weekly newspaper “D’Land” and president of the Luxembourg Association of Professional Journalists (ALJP), stated that it has been very difficult to analyse the situation since the beginning of the pandemic due to Luxembourg’s “disturbingly bad” handling of information. When it comes to communication, the current government is even worse than the previous one, according to Kurschat.
The general manager of Editpress and president of the Press Council, Jean-Lou Siweck, agreed that the government is lacking a certain “professionalism” regarding communication. Over the course of the coronavirus crisis, the media depends on the data provided by the administration, which has been sparse at best. The government still does not send out statements with a summary of the data mentioned during press conferences, Siweck criticised.
This situation has been ongoing, and journalists are currently experiencing the same confusion regarding the vaccines. To this day, the government has yet to publish a document containing the exact number of vaccines delivered so far. At times, Siweck added, it is unclear whether the government are unable to communicate certain data or whether they are simply unwilling.
A phenomenon, which seems to have become more prominent over the course of the pandemic, is that politicians as well as other people who want to communicate address the public via social media instead of conveying the information via journalists. Siweck suspects that this may be due to the fact journalists ask potentially “annoying” follow-up questions.
There is a tendency to control information, Siweck explained, adding that despite what people think, the relationship between the media and politicians is generally not “friendly” or “cordial”. Historian Genot speculated that this controlling tendency might be an attempt to influence public opinion to a certain extent.
Genot explained that the media has made mistakes and that is to be expected, but to stop people from completely losing trust in the press, those mistakes need to be fixed.
According to Kurschat, linguistic inaccuracies should also be addressed, for example a headline reading ’47 cases of UK variant in Luxembourg’ would be more accurate written as ’47 cases detected’. The ALJP president also thinks that some journalists lack the necessary statistical knowledge to properly assess certain information.
The media carries a certain responsibility, especially in times of crisis. However, the Covid-19 crisis has been very different in many aspects. Everyone is affected and that is something new, according to Siweck. The public has substantive questions and demands genuine answers, but neither the media, nor the scientists can provide them.
Many people are bewildered when scientists make contradictory statements, even though a critical debate is essential to their field. This means that it is necessary to explain the scientific method and how it works. The media needs to find a way to communicate the idea that we have very little knowledge and have to live with a certain degree of uncertainty. And all of that preferably in a concise form, something which remains a challenge, according to Siweck.
Kurschat explained that Luxembourg simply lacks proper scientific or expert editorial teams. Another problem is that many scientists in Luxembourg either work in the government’s task force themselves or have been told not to share data publicly.
The media are often criticised for not giving “certain” people a platform. However, it is not the media’s job to give people platforms, according to Siweck. Instead, journalists need to try to reflect reality as best as possible. If there are people in a society that reject official data, then that is an interesting phenomenon and needs to be covered, Siweck added. However, this should be done in a way that the reader can always put it into context.
Genot explained that conspiracy theories often spread faster during times of crisis. Genot is the curator of the Luxembourg City Museum and is currently working on an exhibition on the subject of conspiracy theories. In times of crisis, people are desperate for answers, something which needs to be considered when trying to understand the phenomenon. In the case of Covid-19, scientists either had no answers at the beginning or when they had some, they were too complicated and thus, people started to look elsewhere.
Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or even more recent platforms like Clubhouse, fuelled the spread of conspiracy theories and accelerated the isolation of entire groups of people from the public and traditional media. So far, the problem of widespread disinformation on these platforms has been mostly ignored in the Grand Duchy. Kurschat thinks that the regulation of companies like Facebook is therefore a topic of prime importance.
In order to fight this problem, the government should consider introducing a course on media literacy in schools, Genot added. Young people and adults alike need to understand why they are shown certain information in the first place. Many people are also not aware of aspects like social bots, who influence public opinion to a frightening extent.
