News – M100 SANSSOUCI COLLOQUIUM

Can Dündar about the Turkey election

17 May 2023. There was a certain disappointment in Can Dündar’s and his wife Dilek’s face, when the first predictions of the Turkish election were published last Sunday: No landslide victory for Erdoğan’s challenger Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, no immediate removal of Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdoğan from office. If the opposition had won, Dündar and his wife would have returned to Turkey immediately. Now they have to stay here indefinitely.
It’s not that they don’t like it here, they tell us on election day in the garden of the Maxim Gorki Theatre, from where Dündar commented live on the election. But they miss their home, their families, their house (confiscated by the AKP), and both of them has seen their old and sick parents for years.
A large part of this result is due to the fact that two-thirds of the 1.5 million Turks eligible to vote in Germany once again voted for the increasingly autocratic Erdoğan without even living in Turkey, says Dündar: “I have been observing and trying to understand this for 20 years.”
read more Can Dündar about the Turkey election

AHG is partner of the M100 Media Forum in Tbilisi and the M100 SC in Potsdam

15 May 2023. We are very much looking forward to working with the Alfred Herrhausen Society at the M100 Media Forum in Tbilisi and the M100 Sanssouci Colloquium in Potsdam!

The M100 Media Forum will take place on 22 June under the M100 annual title “Between Ambition and Disarray: The Future of Democracy” in the Georgian capital. It is jointly organised by the M100 Sanssouci Colloquium, the Institute for Media and Communication Policy (IfM) and the Alfred Herrhausen Society. Cooperation partners are Radio Free Europe and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation.

Tbilisi is the capital of a young, emerging democracy that is under enormous pressure. Since the Russian invasion in 2008, Georgia has not only had to contend with a constant security threat from Russia, but also with the concrete consequences of the war in Ukraine in the form of tens of thousands of refugees. It is a country with an impressively vibrant civil society and committed journalists who need our support. The conference will bring together media professionals, NGOs, policy makers and the interested public to discuss the future of democracy in an international perspective.

HOW TO RUN A JOURNALISM START-UP?

25 April 2023. Have you ever thought about creating your own media start-up? But you don’t know how to get started, how to survive in an information jungle that is getting denser by the day, where and how to reach your target audience and – last but not least – how to make money? Or have you already started and want to know what other people’s experiences are with their journalistic business model?
To answer these questions, we invited the founders of three very different young media start-ups to talk about their motivation, their first steps, their set-up, their financing, but also about their doubts and problems:
Julius O. Fintelmann, co-founder of “The European Correspondent“, which was only launched at the end of November 2022;
Florian Vitello, co-founder and Viktoria Franke, editor-in-chief of “Good News Magazin“, which aims to counteract the daily overload of bad and threatening news;
Marvin Schade, founder of the online magazine “Medieninsider” in 2020.

Our free Q&A session will be moderated by Sabine Sasse, head of programme of the M100 Sanssouci Colloquium.
The event will take place on Thursday 25 May 2023 from 18:00 – 19:00 hrs (CET) in English on Zoom.
To register, please write an email to events(at)m100potsdam.org.

We look forward to your registration and to an interesting, exciting discussion!

M100 SC 2023: Between Ambition and Disarray – The Future of Democracy

24 April 2023. On Thursday 14 September, the M100 Sanssouci Colloquium will take place for the 19th time in the Orangery of Sanssouci Palace. Under the title “Between Ambition and Disarray – The Future of Democracy”, we invite 60-70 representatives from politics, media and academia from all over Europe and beyond to a constructive, cross-sector discussion on the perspectives of a free, democratic Europe in the face of a new world order and the role of the media.

We want to discuss why, for the first time since 2004, there are more autocratic than democratic states in the world, the weaknesses but also the strengths of democracy, its future prospects and the role of the media. Read more about the concept here.

Sayyara Mammadova: How Kremlin-affiliated Telegram channels spread disinformation worldwide

31 March 2023. “Fifty-six pro-Kremlin Telegram channels, divided into three networks of similarly named accounts are spreading pro-Kremlin narratives to users worldwide, including in Europe, Asia, South America, and the Middle East. The channels purport to share ‘truthful’ information, but are actually conduits that help pro-Kremlin narratives reach people in other languages.” This is one of the findings of a comprehensive study by Azerbaijani journalist, and research assistant at Atlantic Council’s DFRLab Sayyara Mammadova, who participated in M100YEJ last year, and her colleague resident fellow at Atlantic Council’s DFRLab Nika Aleksejeva.

Alexandra Borchardt: EBU report on climate journalism

30 March 2023. Over the past eight months, M100 advisory board member Prof. Dr Alexandra Borchardt and her two co-authors Katherine Dunn and Felix M. Simon from Oxford University have produced the new EBU Report 2023. Title: “Climate Journalism that works. Between knowledge and impact“. For the study, Alexandra Borchardt and her colleagues interviewed numerous editors-in-chief, media executives and academics worldwide who are researching the topic of climate communication, and present eleven case studies with innovative projects from a wide range of editorial offices, such as Planet A from Deutsche Welle or AFP’s “Future of the Planet” Hub.

George N. Tzogopoulos: The War in Ukraine and Europe’s Choice

29 March 2023. As long as the conflict in Ukraine persists, predictions about its future evolution are hard to make,” writes Dr George N. Tzogopoulos, lecturer and Director of EU-China Programmes at CIFE in his recent paper “The War in Ukraine and Europe’s Choice”: “While European unity has been impressive since 24 February 2022, tensions lurk beneath the surface. The Baltic countries and Poland feel vindicated in their diachronic assessment of Russia and push toward a more muscular EU stance, which is not necessarily endorsed by other member states. Recently, President Macron appeared milder when he said that ‘Russia must be defeated but not crushed’.” (…)
In strategic parlance, the continuation of the war in Ukraine brings the EU to an awkward position, says Tzogopoulos, outlining three scenarios for an end to the war: “A victory for Kyiv, a victory for Moscow, and a stalemate where conflict would occasionally continue, and stability would be fragile.

Save the Date: 14 September 2023

26 March 2023. Date and venue for 2023 are set: the 19th M100 Sanssouci Colloquium will take place on Thursday 14 September at the Orangerie Sanssouci in Potsdam under the title “Between Ambition and Disarray – The Future of Democracy”.
This year we are again inviting around 80 experts from the media, academia and politics from many parts of Europe and beyond to discuss reasons for the strengths and weaknesses of democracy and the influence of the media in various Strategic Working Groups. The conference will end with the presentation of the M100 Media Award.
The week before, 20 to 25 young journalists from all over Europe will discuss at the M100 Young European Journalists Workshop how to report on climate change – and what this means for democracy.
Details will follow shortly.

Manifesto for “peace”, but without Ukraine. Fact-Checking of Russian lies in Europe

21 March 2023. Viktor Sholudko, Alina Tropynina and Kyrylo Perevoshchykov fact-checked the so-called “Manifesto for Peace” by Alice Schwarzer and Sarah Wagenknecht for the Ukrainian organisation VoxUkraine and allowed us to publish the text on the M100 website. You can find the original version here.

On February 10, the “Manifesto for Peace” petition appeared on the Change.org platform, it has already been signed by more than 748,000 people. The authors of the appeal are Germans Alice Schwarzer and Sahra Wagenknecht. And although the vote does not reflect German public opinion – a citizen of any country can support the petition – it is another reminder that Russian “peace” is loved not only in Moscow, but also in some European cities.

How Germany got Vladimir Putin so wrong

18 March 2023. Prof. Dr Wolfgang Ischinger joined the advisory board of the M100 Sanssouci Colloquium at the beginning of the year. On the sidelines of this year’s Munich Security Conference, Georgian journalist Vazha Tavberidze, who has participated in the M100 Sanssouci Colloquium several times, spoke with him for the Georgian service of Radio Free Europe (RFL/RL) about the development of Germany’s Russia policy and why Berlin got Vladimir Putin so wrong (interview in the original).

RFE/RL: Let’s start with a historical retrospective and this seminal speech of Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2007 at the Munich Security Conference. Many now view the speech as a de facto reopening of the Cold War. Do you believe that? And, if yes, why was it not seen like that back then?