Look at this! (Again….)

Picture the most tasteless, offensive paper-selling strategy, one that would make William Randolph Hearst blush. Now multiply that by ten to get an idea of the low to which Berlin’s illustrated dailies sunk yesterday. Plastered across the front pages was a picture of the city’s iconic TV Tower enveloped in grey fumes, a-la the burning World Trade Center towers. Parroting the instantly famous “smoking skyscraper” printed by every newspaper in the world on September 12th, 2007, the Berliner Kurier as well as B Z and yes, Bild, are hoping to sell a few more prints.

What’s worse, the picture stems from a new made-for-tv movie--it’s not related in the faintest to reality. It’s entertainment. But then again, the same could be said of the “newspapers” that printed it. Perhaps it is pointless to accost tabloids for using sensationalism. There are no standards for trash; if there were, it would be journalism. The other illustrated dailies, that is, papers of non-tabloid status with pretensions to real reporting, didn’t even register the TV show today.

But c’mon, wasn’t anyone bludgeoned in their sleep last night in Berlin? Didn’t someone see Jesus in their morning coffee? There is always plenty of front page news to go around for these sorts of papers. The publicity stunt is even more indefensible since they haven’t the slightest pretense of using the attention to say anything of substance.

However, perhaps this is too harsh an assessment; after all, the article did contain a couple actual, real-life facts. It informed me that “The Inferno: Flames over Berlin” is being produced by Wiedemann & Berg, the same team that turned out Oscar-winning “The Lives of Others” [Das Leben der Anderen], which is certainly worth a smirk. And I know that the film, which centers on a fire breaking out in the sky-high restaurant in the tower dome—Windows on the World, anyone?—was filmed in Lithuania, where the TV Tower was meticulously reconstructed. (Gotta love those new EU member states and their cheap labor!) And, thank goodness, I can rest easy, reassured that such a tragedy couldn’t occur in the real tower: a smoking ban reigns in the fire-resistant structure and even food is cooked elsewhere and delivered to the restaurant.

But I wonder if anyone even bothered to read the text. During the German routine of gathering at the newsstand for a morning cigarette and look at the headlines, they may have just said, “Where are the soccer scores?” Bombarded and desensitized as readers are by the classic September 11th photos the papers copycat, it would be no wonder if they didn’t bat an eyelash. They certainly didn’t on the metro I rode, where the riders were notably unalarmed by the enormous, burning tower conspicuously smoking on rustling papers around them.

I do know what the newspaper seller had to say about it. The young man who handed me my B Z shook his head and decried the excessive press given to the baby polar bear at the Berlin Zoo, who was also allotted (much smaller) front-page coverage. “Two weeks of the same crap,” he sighed. “You know how much money the zoo is making off of this?” And he quoted an exact figure. He is certainly following the news closely, yet this crass image didn’t even catch his radar. He’s probably seen it too many times before.

That’s the irony of the tasteless endeavour: tabloids have done their job too well, printing shocking pictures so frequently that the images lose their punch. The readers are visually maxed-out. What was fascinating becomes mundane. This is bad news for the next baby polar bear born in Berlin. It may make the front page—but no one will think twice.

Bear image courtesy http://www.bz-berlin.de/z/picshow2/index.php/item/knut/ibbdb23d778422ada9d3a7c4307f0908b/