MASS MEDIA IN DIVIDED GERMANY 581
German publishers were also not very interested in working through the
GDR past.^113
Studies on journalists in East and West have detected numerous sim-
ilarities in self-identifi cation between the two groups based on surveys
from the 1990s, but they have also identifi ed noticeable diff erences. East
German journalists, for example, saw themselves more idealistically as
advisors and educators, and they were more sensitive in dealing with the
upheavals in the East in their work.^114 West German journalists—who had
been strongly aff ected by the ghost of the Spiegel aff air—were more likely
to break rules in order to get information; the East Germans saw them-
selves more as advocates for the disadvantaged.^115 These diff erences be-
tween East and West also appeared in local journalism. The local sections
of the newspapers in the East were smaller, but the service sections were
more extensive; in the former district papers, moreover, criticism was
mostly voiced only through quotes from third parties.^116 Content analy-
ses have criticized that these papers made local aff airs less transparent
and that they concentrated on political offi cials. The lack of willingness
to participate in politics in East Germany may in part explain this de-
velopment.^117 Comparative studies of postsocialist countries in Central
Europe have come to the conclusion that the media in these countries
also tended to rely more heavily on offi cial sources after 1990 as well.^118
Additionally, the lack of variety within the press landscape in East
Germany has been discussed critically since the beginning of the 1990s.
Based on surveys, the argument has been made that the East Germans
had an authoritarian understanding of democracy and placed less value
on a free choice of newspapers or the freedom to demonstrate as com-
pared to security in the event of illness.^119 Others have countered this
thesis, pointing out that the East Germans hardly had a chance to famil-
iarize themselves with a free selection of print media and understand its
value because the press landscape had only blossomed for such a short
time in 1990.^120 East Germans were also more mistrustful of journalistic
work: according to surveys conducted at the end of 1992, for example,
75 percent of East Germans did not trust the papers, whereas this fi gure
was only 50 percent in the West.^121 They were also much less trustful of
regional subscription magazines and television than West Germans.^122
The East German experience with propaganda and the country’s annex-
ation to the Federal Republic defi nitely seems to have left its mark on the
credibility of the media.
This list of defi cits appears in a diff erent light when it is examined
within the context of later developments in West Germany. Many trends
appeared quickly in East Germany after 1990 that later appeared not only
in numerous postsocialist countries, but also in the West. These included