On February 24, Vladimir Putin gave the order to invade Ukraine. Since then, the war of aggression has dominated the headlines.

The German Press Council has now warned that many media outlets are trying to capitalize on the human suffering by publishing lurid headlines and horrific images that disregard the feelings of victims and their relatives. The only goal is to boost ratings and click numbers.

"We've had complaints about headlines fearmongering, suggesting nuclear war is imminent, and in two cases complaints were filed over the publication of unpixelated photos of war victims," the council spokesperson said at a press conference in mid-March in Berlin.

Press Council spokesman Sascha Borowski, a journalist for the regional Allgäuer Zeitung, criticized misleading headlines that were no more than "clickbaiting." In the first three weeks of the Ukraine war, the Press Council received an average of one complaint per day. The council is a self-regulation media watchdog; if it finds complaints to be justified, the Press Council can issue a public reprimand.

One-third of the reprimands are for privacy violations: when photos, names or sensitive information are published without the individuals' consent.

Memories of the war in Syria

The press watchdog notes parallels between the war in Ukraine and the war in Syria, which began in 2011 and has still not ended. Press Council Managing Director Roman Portack recalls nerve gas attacks on the civilian population with countless fatalities, including children. He questions whether it was really necessary to publish all the "horrific photos" of the victims.

The council's work is based on the German Press Code, which was written in 1973 and lays the ground rules for press freedom and for journalistic work that is thorough, unopinionated and unoffensive. Fact-checking and unbiased reporting is also a core principle,

"Reporting from Ukraine, from the war zone, is very difficult for an editorial team based in Germany," Borowski said. Very few media outlets worldwide have correspondents on the ground, he said, so information about military attacks, soldiers killed and civilian casualties can hardly be verified.

Complaints about fake COVID-19 news

Reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic has been the special focus of the Press Council. Of the 2,557 individual complaints in 2021, almost one-fifth were related to media reports on the pandemic. Complainants flagged reports doubting the efficacy of vaccines or exaggerating their side effects or sensationalizing the situation in intensive care units.

Many of the complaints were a reflection of the readers' personal beliefs rather than factual arguments, said Sonja Volkmann-Schluck, who is responsible for public relations at the Press Council.

Bild receives the most reprimands

The number of reprimands issued in 2021 reached an all-time high of 60. Half of them pertained to the mass-circulation tabloid Bild for sensationalizing and twisting information. For example, when Bild published an article about the government's health agency, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), which registers and reports all relevant COVID figures with regard to the pandemic: Infections, hospitalizations, deaths, convalescents.

The headline read: "Fewer People Die Than the RKI reports." This implied that the institute was publishing false information, which was misleading, according to the Press Council. The article itself was about a delay in reporting. In other words, the RKI figures were correct, but the article's headline suggested the opposite.

This kind of headline would nurture unwarranted mistrust in authorities, the Press Council remarked.

Article 7 of the German Press Code deals with advertising: Readers must be able to recognize advertising as such. Editorial stories that refer to companies, their products, services or events must not be surreptitious advertising. The code demands particular care when handling PR material.

One-third of the Press Council's reprimands in 2021 were issued in connection with advertising — often placed directly next to editorial articles about the products. According to the council, surreptitious advertising poses the risk of "damaging the reputation of the press as a whole."

This article was originally written in German.

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