The press has faced a state of emergency since the global pandemic broke out earlier this year.
In one regard, more and more people are reliant on the news for updates on the Covid-19 situation, but on the other hand, more dissenters have emerged who express a certain amount of distrust for the mass media.
RTL's Maxime Gillen discussed the issues with current Press Council president, general director of Editpress and editor-in-chief of the Tageblatt newspaper, Jean-Lou Siweck.
During lockdown, the media was virtually completely reliant on information supplied by the government. Siweck described this as a less than ideal situation, but it was impossible to avoid and he felt the media did not fully lose their critical edge.
He went on to explain a large number of readers lacked the patience and tolerance to accept that scientific findings, particularly regarding the novel coronavirus, were constantly evolving.
Siweck pointed out that relatively little was known about the virus at the outset and even today details are formulating and updating.
Positions and views on many fundamental questions relating to the pandemic had changed since the virus broke out on a global scale. In Siweck's experience, the public found it difficult to accept the constant information updates.
In the meantime, Siweck found many people lost interest in informing themselves of the situation via the news and actively chose to avoid the realities being reported. He referred to this phenomenon as "press fatigue", in which people become weary of the constant negative news cycle.
He went on to reject the negative accusation that various media outlets published the same information on certain points, stating that if this occurred, it was likely because the information was correct.
In Siweck's view, this represents a common basis and is therefore to be taken positively. A media landscape composed of negotiable and questionable outlooks is a sign of an unhealthy society, according to Siweck.
In general, the Press Council's president said the health crisis had exacerbated phenomena which were already in existence prior to the pandemic.
