Germany: Cloaking PR as Grassroots Movement

What is in the mail sounds like student startup: New homepage “by students for  students”. It was the authors' intention, states the page, to make transparent how  German universities use tuition fees that had been introduced at most public  universities over the last year. The web page asks the elected bodies of student  representatives (AStA) for their opinion about the efficiency with which the fees  are used. There is but one little glitch: The "students" are PR-professionals hired  by INSM (Initiative Neue Soziale Marktwirtschaft), a neoconservative organisation financed by the German employers' federation in the metal producing industry.

“Dear AStA team, on April 10, we launch our website, unicheck.de”, the authors  wrote in a mass e-mailing in the beginning of April, which German news weekly 'Der  Spiegel' quotes in its Tuesday online edition. A man by the name of Thorsten  Schröder writes: “University check is made by students for students and evaluates  universities' use of tuition fees. We are looking forward to your reply, also by  telephone. (...) We do not wish to discuss over the ifs and whys of tuition fees  any more, but now that they are a fact, we want to know what universities are doing  with your money", writes Schröder.

What sounds just like a new service startup idea, in fact has to do very little  with either students, or startups for that reason. A whois check of the domain  'unicheck.de', according to 'Der Spiegel' shows a Jan Loleit registering this  domain with the German NIC, DENIC, on January 11, 2007.

Well, Jan Loleit isn't exactly one whom you would call a student. Loleit is editor  in chief with the 'Initiative Neue Soziale Marktwirtschaft' (INSM) - an  employers-funded think tank which has a very clear-cut mission statement, quoted by  'Der Spiegel': The 'Initiative' sees itself as “a cross-industry, cross-party  platform (..) with a clear foundattion on the three ideals of Ludwig Erhardt"  (first post-war German economics minister and seen by many as the founding father of the economic miracle): "Self motivated initiative, readiness to perform and competition”. What INSM neatly leaves out of its picture apparently is where it plans to bring in component of 'social' (sozial), having been defined as the element of the German welfare state, just before INSM began shooting immense sums of money at the task of cancelling this minor detail from the collective public memory.

In the original meaning of the word, the INSM admits, it considers itself as  'neoliberal'. It sees governement interference fit only for the case of “market distortions by monopolies or trusts that prevent fair competition”. Needless to say that the INSM does no longer wish to discuss the ifs and whys of the case for tuition fees.

Even though repeated studies on behalf of OECD and the UN have shown or concluded  that in no other developed nation the correleation between parent income and a  successful academic carreer is as strong as in Germany, politics and organizations  like INSM power ahead with the introduction of tuition fees. Those, in turn, are  mostly not used for the benefit of students who often still suffer from appalling work conditions and literally decaying campuses.

The INSM, publicly displayed its surprise over Schröder's self-motivated initiative. Schröder, who is editor of 'unicheck.de',  sent out the mailing with his private phone number according to 'Der Spiegel". Also according to the report, Schröder edits the homepage with three other student-workers  from an office at INSM headquarters. "By students for students", according to the  report, is considered a true statement by the makers of the portal as those working  on the page on INSM's behalf are immatriculated at Cologne (Germany) universiy.

Ultimately however, INSM is responsible for the contents of the site, according to  the report. Says INSM site superviser and coordinator, Roland Voigt: "We wish to  produce greater transparency. This is why we mailed out a questionnaire."

The site's sound financial background comes from an organization (INSM) that is by no means a lightweight: The think tank has a hefty annual PR-budget of approximately 8.8 million Euro. A lot of money for the highly professional INSM-lobbyists and PR-staff to beat the drum for what Europeans call "neoliberal" economic policies, basically a set of positions that took a while to come of age in Germany, but that would now effortlessly overtake Thatcherism to the far right in its most unfiltered format. In fact, INSM has used this money well to palce topics on the public agenda, cloaking as a grassroot high-profile citizen initiative, de facto being one of the most admirable PR-stunts post war Germany has seen to date.

“Power over the minds”, public broadcaster political TV-magazine 'Monitor' reported in October 2005, was one of INSM goals. 'Monitor' said that INSM had succeeded to get their “their topics on a public and political agenda at an increasing pace, including schools, the Internet and particularly the mass media. The borderlines between journalism and advertisement all but disappear. A TV-marketing agency uses the classical methods of positioning broadcasts while the audience remains clueless”.

Clueless supporters apparently is what the makers of 'unicheck.de' were hoping for with its camouflaged questionnaire "by students for students". A Bonn (Germany) PR office hoewever already revealed who will really be beating the drums on the homepage: According to 'Der Spiegel', amonsgst others FT Germany will be one of the content partners to the site publishing the results of German opinion pollsters Emnid. The results will be part of 25 "reports" published on this page and produced by professionals for students apparently.

The clueless who filled in the questionnaire in April may now find themselves as  actors in a well orhestrated play they never wanted to be a part of in the first place: A pro-tuition-fee-campaign.

Read the original story (in German) at 'Der Spiegel'