Apollo News and the small print of public debate

A grand title can do a lot of work. “Das Gastarbeiter-Gate: Die Wahrheit über das Wirtschaftswunder” promises a fight over postwar German prosperity, Hendrik Wüst and the role of Turkish guest workers. What the reader actually sees, at least in the material available here, is something far more modest: a page that asks for consent, money or both.

Apollo News presents the usual modern bargain. Read for free with advertising, or pay 3.99 euros a month and enjoy the site without it. If that sounds like a routine media offer, it is. The page also explains that, with advertising, data may be passed on to up to 807 partners. For personalised advertising, cookies, device IDs and similar identification technologies are used. Consent can be withdrawn later through the tracking settings at the bottom of the page.

There is also the familiar recital about technical necessity. Certain services, the page says, are needed for the operation of the site, including security-related functions and hosting and backend infrastructure. Cookies can also be used to recognise whether a user wants to stay logged in, so that the service can be made available more quickly on a return visit. The wording is bureaucratic, but the message is plain enough: the digital press now runs on a mixture of data, advertising and subscriptions, and readers are expected to accept the arrangement with a click.

That leaves the actual historical claim hanging in the air. The visible text does not contain the promised argument about the Wirtschaftswunder, nor any evidence for or against the political provocation attached to the title. Instead, it offers a reminder of how much of contemporary journalism is wrapped in consent management, monetisation and access control before a single line of content appears.

The irony is hard to miss. A piece that appears to promise a sharp intervention in a debate about Germany’s postwar rise is, in the material available, mostly a demonstration of how dependent online media have become on the machinery of digital commerce. One may admire the candour. One may also wonder whether the public discussion is increasingly being sold in the same package as the ads that finance it.

Written by Thomas Nussbaumer thomas.nussbaumer@alpineweekly.com