[Hermel]

A very eye-opening event for me was when I visited Berlin in 2003 (?). We watched ZDF (government-financed German TV) news and saw a huge crowd protesting against Bush’s war in Iraq. Wanting to join them, we found a mostly empty square with a much smaller group of protestors standing in a triangle-formation in front of the cameras, which were setup such that the crowd would appear massive on TV.

So if you think European media are free of political bias and distortions, think again.

[the-dude]

Not to detract from your point, but there have been big protests against the Iraq war in Europe. I was there.

My grievance is more how the media, including the government financed ones swallowed said war.

[AshamedCaptain]

I don't particularly think that German media is anything better, but let's not fall into the anecdote=data trap.

[mantas]

Yes, let's not fall into anecdata trap and wait for quality data why should we blindly trust media.

[yreg]

I know nothing of ZDF, but right now our state public tv is also in a very bad shape.

It used to have high quality, but in the previous government period one of the ruling parties changed the management and now it's not objective at all. In fact, all the respected journalists left for other media and the reputation of the organisation is tarnished (polls show people don't trust it anymore).

Fortunately we have independent media as well.