Die Realität medialer Berichterstattung: Veröffentlichungsprozesse von Untersuchungsausschüssen in Deutschland, England und der EU

In this article, the authors focus on the connections between political events and their reporting in the mass media, based upon hearing protocols and press reports, respectively. In order to gain some insight into the rules and mechanism at the heart of the publication processes, we compare press reports on three political inquiries: the German Visa committee, the Hutton Inquiry in the UK, and the CIA-committee at the European Parliament. Along the lines of an empirical constructivism, we argue that media publication processes achieve certain transfers; these are already implied in the organization of the political events in question. Highlighting three aspects of publication (reality markers, ways of quoting, and media autonomization), we show how the publications become successively removed from the events, finally feeding into further media discourse. Thus, even those quotes and sound bites eventually achieving far-reaching circulation have undergone a history of adjustment and supersession.