Concerns about media, especially in Germany

Communications professor Stephan Russ-Mohl shares concerns about media, especially in Germany. He is interviewed by Spencer Graves. Russ-Mohl is a prolific journalist, researcher and professor emeritus at the University of Lugano in the Italian-speaking portion of Switzerland. He specializing in quality assurance and quality management in mass media focusing primarily but not exclusively on Germany. Between 1985 and 2001 he was primarily based at the Free University of Berlin. Between 2002 and 2018 he served primarily on the faculty at the University of Lugano. He has also had sabbaticals at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and at Stanford in the US and at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. He has published primarily in German but some in English, and some of his work has been translated into many other languages. In a 2023 book on "Deep Journalism", Russ-Mohl and co-editor Sebastian Turner described four categories of media based on people's willingness to pay:1 Job-related information, where people pay to improve their abilities at work. Consumer markets, where people pay to help them get more value from what they buy. Entertainment. Politics and public life, where willingness to pay is low, because most individuals are "rationally ignorant",2 as their ability to influence public policy is limited. He has also written with Susanne Fengler about "The (Behavioral) Economics of Media Accountability".3 In this, they describe "the journalist as Homo oeconomicus, citing Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman, and others in behavioral economics. In 2024 he published a chapter on "Strengths and Weaknesses of Corona Coverage"4 in a book on Corona and the mass media.5 Shortly after the 2024 US presidential election, he discussed, "The media power of billionaires".6 Ten months after Trump's second inauguration, he noted that, "Donald Trump manages to dominate the global media landscape even in his second term", then asked "How does he do it? And what should journalists do about it?"7 Bibliography Anthony Downs (1957), An Economic Theory of Democracy, Wikidata Q482418 Anthony Downs (1957), An Economic Theory of Democracy, Wikidata Q482418 Fengler et al., eds. (2014). Journalists and Media Accountability: An International Study of News People in the Digital Age (in en). Peter Lang. Wikidata Q138414279. ISBN 978-1-4331-2281-1. Dennis Gräf and Martin Hennig, eds. (23 October 2024). Corona und mediale Öffentlichkeiten (in de). Springer Science+Business Media. Wikidata Q138414760. ISBN ‎ 978-3658455033. Stephan Russ-Mohl; Susanne Fengler (2014). The (Behavioral) Economics of Media Accountability (in en). 213-230. Wikidata Q138414323. ISBN 978-1-4331-2281-1. Stephan Russ-Mohl (2024a). "7". Stärken und Schwächen der Berichterstattung über Corona (in en) (published 23 October 2024). Wikidata Q138414659. ISBN ‎ 978-3658455033. Stephan Russ-Mohl (2024b). "Die Medienmacht der Milliardäre". Die Furche. 29 November 2024. Wikidata Q138416714. ISSN 0016-299X. Stephan Russ-Mohl (13 November 2025). "Wie Trump alle Kanäle dominiert". Die Furche. Wikidata Q138416801. ISSN 0016-299X. Sebastian Turner and Stephan Russ-Mohl, eds. (1 June 2023). Deep Journalism: Domänenkompetenz als redaktioneller Erfolgsfaktor (in de). Herbert von Halem Verlag. Wikidata Q138414099. ISBN 978-3-86962-659-8. _______ Turner and Russ-Mohl (2023). Downs (1957). Russ-Mohl and Fengler (2014). Russ-Mohl (2024a). Gräf and Hennig (2024). Russ-Mohl (2024b). Russ-Mohl (2025). Copyright 2026 Stephan Russ-Mohl and Spencer Graves, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 international license.