The fool was quickly identified: the big loser was the "NZZ", sneered the "Tages-Anzeiger" after Tito Tettamanti's successful "Basler-Zeitung" deal. And its sister paper, the "SonntagsZeitung", also poked at the competitor's open wound with the same intention over the weekend. What the investigative professionals at Werdstrasse 21 did not tell their readers, however, was that their own employer, Tamedia, had also expressed interest in the "BaZ" - and had ultimately failed.
The same principle a week earlier: the "Tages-Anzeiger" was turkey rcs data wordily outraged about the financial construct for "tax optimization" that a Zurich law firm is said to have drawn up for a German businessman in the 1990s. The newspaper did not mention that the contracts - as noted in the "Financial Times Deutschland" - had been signed by lawyer Pietro Supino, today's publisher of the "Tages-Anzeiger". The art of omission, as Picasso already recognized, is what distinguishes all great artists. Now, one should not act more Catholic than the Pope: other media outlets are not particularly keen on researching their own newspapers either.
That is human and understandable. But it is astonishing that the "Tagi", which throws moralizing clubs with Olympic precision, should subject itself to such self-castigation. Only ten years ago, the newspaper was attacking its own products like the TV 3 channel at full speed. This was probably not particularly intelligent, but less hypocritical. Perhaps the "Tagi" editorial team should just follow the advice of long-time publisher Hans-Heinrich Coninx. The most important thing, says Coninx in the extremely readable book "Being a Publisher" by Karl Lüönd, is the credibility of journalism; one cannot afford to have any weaknesses in this area.