"The truth instead of the Lying Media!"
Despite "poison gas", "barrel bombs" and "annexation" - a large part of propaganda is going nowhere in Germany. Recent surveys show a pronounced media literacy among many citizens and a great yearning for German-Russian rapprochement.
The first survey of interest might be the one Forsa Institute did on behalf of RTL (private media TV) about the trust of Germans in their
öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunk, the public broadcast. It
showed that only 48% of Germans think ARD and ZDF would do their job well (9%) or very well (39%). 30% of Germans think that they do a mediocre job, and 14% think they do it badly. Yet still 74% support the dual system of public and private broadcast. So, Germans do want their public broadcast TV, but they criticize it and 44% consider the monthly fee of €17.50 too high. A bigger problem with the TV tax, as most citizens call it, is that it is charged per household, regardless of whether you own a TV or not. Even cars have to pay for their radios (with a few marginal exceptions), which is especially a burden for small businesses like plumbers since they have to pay for almost every rolling thing in their car pool. So, public broadcasting, yay, funding and information, rather nay.
Another poll conducted by Civey about the trust of German citizens into the press in general
shows that
53.3% have no confidence in the media, a fifth (20.8%) has even absolutely no confidence. A third of Germans (33.9%) as strong confidence in the media, but only 1.9% have total confidence. So, if you include the weekly and daily rags, the trusting citizens become a (slight) minority.
So far so trustworthy. The following surveys, however, really surprised me to my delight.
Comment: The Turkish Stream pipeline has had a long, tortuous history. Still, Russia's patience and flexibility has paid off. Europe must be breathing a sigh of relief at soon no longer being subject to Ukraine's tantrums.