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One of the daily miracles of the media world is that there is always exactly enough news to fill the slot.
Whether it be a news broadcast, an online blog or a newspaper column like this one, something important enough to justify a headline happens every day, and enough other relatively important things happen to hold the ads apart. (If there are more ads, the news coverage automatically expands to meet the demand.)
And what if it’s a day with no natural disasters, no news that’s actually new from the world’s few remaining wars, and no elections underway anywhere with colorful characters and fraught outcomes to fill out the international news section? Then you just inflate an ongoing political debate into a “crisis” and write about that. For example:
“The stakes have been raised as Germany’s coalition unravels.” “Defiant French president says he will remain in power until 2027, amid political turmoil following collapse of government.” “Why the Franco-German engine that powered the EU is almost kaput.” “Political turmoil in Berlin and Paris is an ominous way to finish the year.”
Those were all headlines in English-language media between Dec. 14 and 17 — and yet the people doing the last of their Christmas shopping in the shops in Berlin and Paris seem remarkably unconcerned. Oblivious to the apocalypse that is about to overwhelm them, you might say. Or maybe they know more than their own media are saying.
Start with the French “crisis.” It began with the continent-wide elections for the Parliament of the European Union in June, when the neo-fascist National Front, renamed “National Rally” to obscure its origins, won more seats for France than any other party: 31 percent of French voters backed it.
President Emmanuel Macron, not even halfway through his second five-year term, knew that he would be the lamest of lame ducks if that result was left unchallenged. He therefore immediately called a snap France-only election. The vote split three ways and the National Rally got the same share of the vote as before, but came third in seats in the National Assembly.
Complicated? Yes. Calamitous? No. But ever since the pundits of both the international and the French media have been hyperventilating about Macron’s ghastly mistake and warning that the fascists are nearing power in France.
The truth is that votes for the EU Parliament don’t matter much because it doesn’t have much real power. Voters in France and elsewhere treat it as a consequence-free opportunity to reprimand parties and politicians that they would feel obliged to vote for “faute de mieux” in a French national election, where the outcome really matters.
Macron did what he needed to do to restore his authority, and yes, it’s a bit of a mess because it’s hard to make a stable government with a three-way split in the National Assembly. He may have to run through several prime ministers before he finds one who sticks. But he will still be in power until 2027, and the National Rally is still frozen out.
The “crisis” in Germany is even less convincing. An unstable three-way coalition between a mildly social democratic party, a Green party and a liberal pro-business party has fallen apart after two years in power. That’s rather longer than most people expected it to last when it was formed.
There will be a federal election in February, and the likely winner will be the Christian Democratic Party that has led Germany for 16 of the past 20 years. The new chancellor will be Friedrich Merz, a moderate conservative, but he will probably have to settle for being senior partner in a coalition with the outgoing Social Democrats.
It’s a real journalistic challenge to make a mountain out of that particular molehill, but brave journalists are pointing to the threat from the neo-fascists of the Alternative for Germany party. They are currently running at 18 percent of the vote in the opinion polls, down from 22 percent a year ago. Good luck with that.
Journalists will write almost any old rubbish to hold the ads apart. Consider this article, for example.
