Anatomy of a Story

I broke the Obama story last Saturday. Sorry. It wasn’t my reporting — that was back-channel Spiegel magazine stuff, deeply sourced and anonymous — but I wrote, produced, and posted the piece that announced to English readers that Obama was maybe kind of planning to hopefully give a “major speech” at the Brandenburg Gate.

The hype has been spectacular. What’s even more spectacular is how a tiny dosage of fact has set things spinning. For anyone who cares about how news works on the Internet, here’s the week in review:

The story was a Spiegel exclusive, and editors in Hamburg sent out the bare facts on Saturday in advance of the magazine. I turned them into a news piece because we knew the wires would do the same. They did, and for most of the weekend no one did anything but repeat Spiegel’s facts, including Politico and Lynn Sweet, who got linked from the Huffington Post and absorbed a lot of the traffic that should have been ours.

The only person who picked up a phone to add to the story over the weekend, as far as I can tell, was Roger Cohen, who found a source for a reliable date.

Major speech was my phrase, entirely mine. Lynn Sweet and then the Huffington Post copied it verbatim into their headlines. My basis for those words was the fact that a German ambassador wanted Obama to give only one speech on his jaunt through Europe. Really I had no way of knowing whether this hypothetical speech would be “major” (hence my question mark). I just figured a single speech by Obama, setting the tone for his posture toward Europe, was bound to be big, and I figured that was close enough for headline purposes.

It was, technically. But after I saw my own phrase repeated on a few web sites (“Obama Mulling Major Speech in Berlin”) I wondered if it startled Obama. As in, “Major speech? I was just gonna give ’em some bullshit. I was gonna clip this and that from my speeches in Montana and declare it in a ringing voice like it was just occurring to me right that instant. This was supposed to be a quick ride through Europe. Damn, now I have to write a major speech.”

I had a feeling there might be a game of telephone, so I phrased things carefully. I put in a paragraph about Reagan’s Brandenburg Gate speech in 1987 and Kennedy’s speech before the Schöneberg Rathaus so a bunch of eager American journalists wouldn’t get their references wrong and start trying to convince the nation it was Just Like Kennedy. All in all, I think, it went well. But it’s still strange to watch the story spin away and change shape like an oversized soap bubble. This guy at the Daily Kos, for example, has no idea what he’s talking about, although he pretends he does:

Once a monument to German imperialism, from which Napoleon once famously stole the golden chariot, then a symbol of Nazi Germany, the [Brandenburg] Gate somehow survived the carnage of Allied bombardment that leveled most of Berlin to be reborn as something else—- as a symbol of the world’s commitment to freedom, a symbol of the world’s solidarity with Germany, and now today, as a symbol of a unified Germany.

The chariot isn’t golden, it’s bronze, and although it’s been replaced since World War II (saying the gate “survived” is an exaggeration), I believe the chariot was bronze even when Napoleon had it hauled back to France. At the time the gate was no “monument to German imperialism,” because there was no German empire. It was a monument to pompous Prussian militarism and the slightly sad, muddy, provincial capital of Berlin. I work near the Brandenburg Gate, and I can tell you that even in these hyperbolic times it doesn’t serve as a symbol of “the world’s commitment to freedom.” It’s a tourist attraction. It’s one of the few grand old (rebuilt) pieces of architecture left in the capital. It might be a symbol of a unified Germany, but only because it was stuck behind a concrete wall for 28 years.

I suspect Obama wanted to speak there because the TV tower as a backdrop would lack dignity. His handlers also may have thought a replay of Reagan’s speech would confuse a few nutcases, which it has (scroll down, or search: Hitler). But the Brandenburg Gate has no special meaning. Nazis marched under it with torches; Kennedy drove by in a car; Reagan gave a speech under it; Michael Jackson dangled his baby out a hotel window nearby; David Bowie and Roger Waters (and the Scissor Sisters and even fucking Bushido) have played in front of it, and during two consecutive world-class soccer tournaments it has served as the backdrop for what Germans call a Fan Mile. It is not sacrosanct. Really. It’s just a good place to put a lot of people.

But my other point is that some American journalists and bloggers assume that Spiegel Online, as a German endeavor, is run entirely by Germans, some of whom have really good English and translate things for the Internet but otherwise ignore the American division of the Web. Not true. The English office is lousy with Americans. We can read the things you write, and we think some of them are silly.

     posted 11 July 2008 by Michael Scott Moore

  1. As far as I know, the Quadriga that’s currently on top of the Gate is a meticulous reproduction of the one Napoleon stole, which is in storage for future display at the Berlin Historical Museum, should it ever be (re) built. (The original premises now forms part of the Jewish Museum). And yeah, I think the original was bronze. Casting that whole hunk out of gold, or even gilding it, would be a major capital investment worthy of Dubai.

    But congratulations: you’ve just been Molehilled. I’m trying to introduce this concept, which I’ve stolen from Elizabeth Drew in the NYRB, into general parlance. It means that, absent actual Real Things to talk about, the media picks up little things (molehills) and turns them into Significant Portents (mountains).

    I’m looking forward to the speech, should it happen. I was there for Clinton’s speech (can’t remember the exact year), with poor old Helmut Kohl trudging with him from the Reichstag, captured on a huge Diamondvision screen, in the baking heat. I really thought Helmut, who was ruby-red by the time they reached the dais, was going to expire, and commented to friends that Americans would never elect someone in such obviously bad physical health to the head of government.

    — Ed Ward    Jul 12, 12:53 pm    #

  2. “Molehilled” about says it. I approve of that as a verb.

    — Mike    Jul 12, 02:50 pm    #

  3. And lookie here.

    — Bowleserised    Jul 12, 05:47 pm    #

  4. I loved the last paragraph of the entry. I always had the same sentiment when I worked with Amercian journalists in Hong Kong…I had one person comment that the American press reports “on our AP stuff like we are goons in a vacuume.” Always cracks me up when I read how US media deals with foreign-born news and I think of that sentiment (this was back in the day that the American journalists were talking about the Hong Kong handover and how it was almost the final cog in making China a super duper power…mainland press were treating it as not that big of a deal. hehe).

    But why is the German government seeingly think this is a big deal? I think that’s more interesting than whatever the speech may be in the end. I can conjecture, but I haven’t really seen why a, basically, concert venue, is needing “special accomodations for this” or whatever the words are they are using from the government. Does he need to have Madonna open for him or something to make it par for the gate?

    I’m radical, though…I would have had him go to the former Lindsay Air Force base in Wiesbaden and make some poignent hostage connection to peace in the Middle East and how he understands that world affairs are sticky wickets in lots of forms around the world and he understands that. If his campaign builds this up too much, it’s going to sound like a Cold War-standoff grandstand.

    e

    — e    Jul 13, 03:42 am    #

  5. The German government thinks it’s a big deal because Obama + Brandenburg Gate sounds like a powerful combination. The first viable black candidate for US president, with a grand European backdrop, giving an eloquent speech?

    But Merkel also has political reasons — “A member of the Bush delegation approached Merkel’s foreign policy advisor, Christoph Heusgen, at the G-8 summit in Japan to discuss misgivings about Obama’s planned speech. The government is also acting out of respect for Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who has long enjoyed strong ties to Germany and good personal relationships with a number of high-level government officials in Berlin. And it is in no way a given that McCain will lose the election.”

    — Mike    Jul 13, 01:55 pm    #

  6. If correct, I am not sure to laugh or cry.

    e

    — e    Jul 14, 07:59 am    #

  7. http://www.slate.com/id/2195347/

    — e    Jul 15, 04:44 am    #

  8. Glad to know where Cohen got his intel. And here I was thinking HE broke the story.

    — Ben    Jul 15, 07:41 pm    #

  9. Hah! Nope, it was us. He also used the phrase “major speech,” by the way, but he knew how to soft-pedal it.

    — Mike    Jul 15, 08:02 pm    #