When the image rules ...

In it’s February edition the German magazine „View“ (claim: „The news magazine in pictures“) speculates about „The new power of images“ (Die neue Macht der Bilder). Even if we can insinuate that the „View“ editors might have had some egoistic marketing intentions, the objective indications can hardly be ignored. „View“ quotes popular recent examples like ...

- the public love affair between French president Nicolas Sarkozy and singer Carla Bruni which dominated the European media for weeks and captivated the French public before the couple finally got married. The well orchestrated images covered discussions about Sarkozy’s political performance and agenda. “Bling-Bling-President” is the term the French media invented for the Sarkozy way to create visual politics.

- the tv pictures of Hillary Clinton almost in tears after being defeated by Barack Obama for the first time in the pre-electional race in the state of Iowa. The scenes of an emotional Hillary didn’t miss their impact on the American people. Only days later she celebrated her surprising comeback in New Hampshire.

- the visualized story of a new born ice bear baby in the zoo of Nuremberg, abandoned by it’s mother. Photos and videos moved the German public. Youngsters invested their pocket money to download the latest portraits of little „Flocke“. It even was a déjà-vu. One year earlier it was Knut, the ice bear baby from Berlin that made visual headlines around the globe.

- at the same time the security video of two teenagers beating an old man almost to death in Munich’s subway caused a controversial political debate about how to deal with young criminal immigrants. When the incident was taken up by the „Bild“ mass tabloid and the video was repeated in all tv channels the conservative governor (Ministerpräsident) in the state of Hessen changed his election campaign and demanded law and order measures against young criminal immigrants, trying to profit from xenophobic prejudices. Would it have been possible without the scaring pictures?

The new power of images is a fact. But it requires independent and unbiased journalim to protect the world from a dictatorship of images.