The Private Life of Politicians: New image making strategies and how they have changed relations between politicians and the press in Germany

Christina Holtz-Bacha

In early January this year, the British paper The Mail on Sunday brought up the rumour about the German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder having an affair with a prominent TV talk show host. A German regional daily took it up, and thus the story started to make the rounds. However, most German media remained hesitant and rather tried to avoid the topic. Even the intrepid tabloid Bild, although usually not close to Schroeder, refrained from crying out loud and instead printed a picture of Schroeder's wife and asked innocently: How does she support [endure?]all this? Schroeder himself went to court and sued for invasion of privacy.

American politicians are used to public attention on their private lives. In Germany, however, a politician’s private sphere has always been regarded as a journalistic taboo. On the basis of an unspoken agreement, German politicians could be sure that the media would not publish incriminating information even when it was common knowledge amongst journalists. There are several reasons for this kind of restraint. One is the German right to privacy, or better, the legal interpretation thereof. Another is how journalists see their role and the relation between the media and the State. Finally, there has always been a notorious coziness between journalists and politicians in Germany fostered by the so-called hothouse atmosphere that was characteristic for Bonn as long as the government had its seat there.

According to the Anglo-Saxon view on press freedom, which rejects any regulation of the press, even if supportive in nature, the public interest ranks higher than the individual’s right to privacy. In Germany, as in other West European countries, the right to privacy instead gets more weight. The individual private sphere is defined by German law as being worthy of protection. Hence, in the case of politicians this right to intimacy must be weighed against the informational interest of the public.

As long as the German government had its seat in the comparatively small city of Bonn the political business was isolated and concentrated in the government quarter, and this fostered a close relationship between politicians and journalists. Keeping a distance was difficult when you frequented the same restaurants and bars and stood in the same line at the post office. So, although journalists thus had a good chance to find out about the private matters of politicians, they would not reveal them because journalists and politicians constantly had to ”look into each others eyes.”

In recent years, the relation between journalists and politicians has changed. What was once called a symbiotic relation has been judged as having become parasitic. Journalists now complain about being exploited by politicians. Politicians complain about the way they are treated by the media. The taboo that protected politicians in their private sphere seems to be disappearing. Several reasons can be given for this development: one is the fact that politicians themselves more and more use the private for political strategy; another is the changes in the German media system.

Use of the private as a political strategy

Schroeder was not the first politician to use the private for political strategy, and he is not the only one. However, the 1990s made the private side of German politicians more visible than ever. For example, when he was still prime minister of the state of Lower Saxony, he and his former wife were known to entertain an open house and were therefore also called ”the Clintons of Lower Saxony”. When the couple split, the whole country had the chance to follow the divorce in the media.

The 2002 national election campaign was another proof of the new popularity of exploiting the private for appealing to voters. For the first time the wives of the top candidates played an important role in the campaign and also got much attention from the media.

There are good reasons for the fact that politicians talk about private matters in public and thus feed the media with something that these happily indulge in, and that, vice versa, the media readily step over the imaginary borderline between the public and the private. From the perspective of the political actors, privatization in the sense that the candidates are presented in private roles and their private environment rather than in their political role, serves four functions: humanization, simplification and distraction, emotionalization and the striving for a celebrity status.

Humanization is a classical image strategy of political actors. Politicians try to appear more human, more personable, more like you and me, thus seemingly close to their voters, like someone familiar. This strategy is preferred for image work with stiff, arrogant or cold types of politicians. Using privatization to simplify and distract is one way of dealing with complex political issues that are difficult to convey to the electorate. Political programs and solutions for political problems are therefore preferably associated with and symbolized by persons. The politician stands for the program. Personalization facilitates the presentation of politics by the political system. At the same time, the political system adapts to the necessities of the media and of television in particular which cannot present politics in an abstract way but has to deliver pictures. The personalization of the political is also an adaptation to the voters who prefer to orient themselves towards persons and not towards abstract programs.

Furthermore, personalization is used to distract from uncomfortable issues. Certain issues are better avoided, particularly if there is not much leeway for decisions or if they are difficult or unpopular, and personalization is a strategy to distract from such topics.

The aim of a strategy using privatization as emotionalization is to generate general sympathy and create emotional bonds. This is a consequence of the weakening of traditional parties ties. Since socio-demographic characteristics have lost their explanatory power for party identification and the voting decision and short-term factors have gained increased importance, parties employ ”niceness” and ”feel-good” factors in an attempt to create emotional ties. Finally, politicians use their private life as a strategy to establish, maintain and increase their celebrity status. Fame is a necessary capital for politicians. The celebrity status guarantees media attention since it is also one of the journalistic selection criteria.

Recent changes in the media

Commercialization, mainly due to the introduction of commercial broadcasting in Germany in the mid-1980s, has had a notable effect on the electronic media. Just as other media products, politics has to hold its own on the market, its success being measured by ratings. Depoliticization trivialization and privatization are the consequences of certain attention and adaptation strategies adopted by politicians in order to stand up to the competition with other and more attractive offerings.

Today, gossip and human interest are no longer the strict domain of the tabloid press. The commercialization of the media fostered the human interest format. The human interest format offers issues that are exciting and easy to understand by way of personalization and presentation of individual cases, with references to everyday life and a reliance on the emotional. With their interest in the private life of political celebrities, the media, led by commercial television and the gossip magazines, profit from the overall shift of the borderline between the private and the public, but in doing so they also foster the trend. This has consequences for the political actors: The understanding of what is public interest today reaches far into what was once defined as private sphere.

The changes in the relation between politicians and journalists have also been attributed to the new situation after the government moved to Berlin during the 1990s. In particular, there is fierce competition among the many media that are represented in the German capital.

Consequences

Because the political actors themselves have started to instrumentalize their private life for their own presentation, this also serves as a justification of the journalists when they cross the borderline between the public and the private. Thus, when the story about Schroeder broke out in early January, many people argued that he had no right to complain because he himself had used the private for political strategy again and again.

When they use their private lives in image-building, politicians seemingly invite further glimpses into their private sphere. Nevertheless, when staging their private lives, they try to maintain control over what becomes public. In the same way that a cleverly staged political event usually challenges journalists to investigate further, the staging of private lives challenges journalists to go beyond what is offered to them. However, pointing to the strategies and thus making politicians the scapegoat is a too easy way to avoid thinking about where the public interest ends and where the private sphere of a politician begins.

The politician who opens his private sphere in the interest of his image embarks on a difficult tightrope walk between closeness and distance. By demonstrating his closeness to the electorate, and thus giving up his distance, a politician presents her/himself as a human like you and me. However, the loss of this distance is a deadly sin for each politician, said Max Weber. Those who present themselves as too human and ordinary will have problems to further recommend themselves for leadership.

The "tyranny of intimacy" however, has progressed in such a way that - as Richard Sennett noted - it has almost become a suicidal act to say: my private life is off bounds to you; what you should know are my convictions and my program which I will enforce. The politician who refuses to open her/his private life to the public thus knows exactly that s/he is going to have a hard time because s/he will be regarded as inaccessible or even arrogant.

Finally, it remains an open question whether politicians risk a new quality of political argument by opening up their private sphere for their image campaign. As opposed to the U.S., negative campaigning in Germany usually only refers to issues but not to the person of the candidate. However, by making their personal qualities and their private life an issue of the campaign, candidates might invite their opponents to use them for political debate, too. Edmund Stoiber for example, Schroder's opponent in the recent election campaign, liked to stress that he was married to the same woman since 34 years and thus alluding to the fact that Schroeder is married for the fourth time.

Christina Holz-Bacha is professor of communication at the University of Mainz and currently serves as President of the Political Communication Division of the International Communication Association.