On March 14th, Jakob-Moritz Eberl was awarded the Hannes Haas Young Researchers Award for his Dissertation. Congratulations!
In his dissertation, Eberl shed light on the relationship between politics and the media and discussed the seemingly politically motivated crisis of confidence in traditional media. Eberl argues that in order to counteract the respective voters’ discontentment with media coverage, responsibility also lies within the party system to increase citizens’ trust or at least not to further citizens’ distrust in the media; particularly so, since trust in a free and independent media is the cornerstone of a healthy democracy. Particularly academia, politics as well as the general public should call out public officials spreading said generalized allegations about media slant. Finally, journalists – both from broadsheets as well as from tabloids – should try to be more transparent about their journalistic practices and decisions to offer skeptics the possibility to reassess their attitudes.
The award jury praised "the reflective handling of the charged term media bias'". In order to avoid media distortions of opinion, Eberl also advocates adherence to the classical principle of separation (of fact and opinion) in the digital sector: "Journalists are also citizens and have a political opinion. It is, however, important that they limit expressions of opinion to (editorial) comments."
The Hannes Haas Young Researchers Award is sponsored by the VÖZ and the Initiative Quality in Journalism (IQ) with the support of the APA and is awarded for scientific work dealing with the social significance and responsibility of journalism.
Find the full press release on the event here.
Find the four published papers from Jakob-Moritz Eberl thesis here.