After having very long discussions yesterday, today we met in FreudHouse a little bit later. This morning's topic was "freedom of the press". Watching the map from reporters without borders we can see, that the freedom of the press is still very limited in many countries. Ukraine is making successes, but is still not "totally free", Germany belongs to one of the freest countries.
Why do we need a free press? And which factors eliminate this freedom?
We did a group-work concerning topics just as protection of the youth, incitement of the people and limitations in the state of war. The group came to the result, that in some cases a limitation of the freedom of press might be necessary to protect minorities. On the other hand violence against journalists and showing only one political view can not be justified. It is our task as readers to chose the kind of report we trust to and to inform us not only through media which represents our own opinion.
Another point, mentioned in a short presentation by Elena and Fabian, is the history of the freedom of the press. Even if it's on a high level in Germany right now, it has not always been. We should be careful to criticize ones contry's media-politics without knowing about it's background.