Karlsruhe Dialogues 2009

Prof. Axel Buchholz

Speaker 

was born in Berlin in 1939. He first worked for the Spandauer Volksblatt in Berlin as well as for the Sender Freies Berlin. Later, he went to the Saarland radio broadcasting, where he started as a reporter, moderator and editor.

Until 2002 he was chief editor and vice programme director at the Saarland radio broadcast. Today he is honorary professor at the Institute for Journalism at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz as well as lecturer and trainer for radio, television and print media at Universities, schools for journalism and editorial offices.As such, he has published several standard works on journalism in radio and television. Amongst others he is Co-editor and Co-author of the book “Radio-Journalism” (Econ, 9th edition 2009) and editor and Co-author of the book “Television-Journalism” (Econ, 7th edition 2006).

In 2005 he wrote 18 theses dealing with the journalistic reporting about right-wing extremism. According to him, not only a proper investigation, a truthful reporting and correct information, which have to be part of any journalistic work, are necessary, but also the revealing of contradictions for example between programmatic statements and actual behaviour or between the real and the proclaimed intentions. Furthermore, in his opinion neither a journalism which makes people concerned nor a journalism which indoctrinates people is wanted. Instead, facts are important to animate people to think about this topic.