Some novels are so immediately of their own time that they are declared an instant classic…only to eventually fade into obscurity as they gradually more and more irrelevant. Others are almost immediately tossed into the bargain bin due to a collective shrug of the shoulders of the reading public at the time…only to finally have time catch up to their ideas and become the latest addition to the overlooked masterpiece section. Then there is that rare class of books that speak directly to the time they were published and eventually become even more relevant.
Such is the case with Heinrich Böll’s The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum. The story is steeped in the period of German history in which was written and published, having been based in part on actual events involving the author himself. Heinrich Böll witnessed first-hand the ways in which West Germany’s media worked as an unofficial anti-communist propaganda arm of the government. His reputation survived the assault, but suffered lasting damage, nevertheless. His fictional doppelganger, Katharina Blum, is not as lucky. As a result of unfair, improperly researched, and biased reportage her life will never be the same. At the time, in 1974, the real-life events inspiring this story and the fictionalized story they stimulated seemed something that could only take place in another country, especially one like Germany with a history of extreme commingling of journalism and propaganda.
Flash forward roughly half a century and the idea it couldn’t happen in America is probably gone forever. With the buzzword “fake news” being touted to impugn legitimate news organizations by a government so closely identified with illegitimate news organizations which were, ironically, actual purveyors of fake news, the world turned upside down. The whole point of the story of Katharina is the danger that inevitably occurs when the media which has been entrusted by the public to report facts makes the conscious decision to report “alternative facts” either out of a direct desire to mislead or simply because they are not doing their job well enough to get the facts right.
The coverage of the Covid-19 epidemic could almost literally seem two different stories taking place in two different worlds depending on where one was getting their news. A 24-hour-news network on cable channel 21 might be reporting on the number of cases, hospitals being filled beyond capacity and the scientific studies concluding that certain medications showed no efficacy and could actually be harmful to many people while the network on channel 22 was reporting that the number of cases were artificially inflated, hundreds of hospital beds were going unused and that certain medication was shortening the duration of the virus for millions.
The twisting of facts to fit a preconceived narrative, the targeting of those associated with the government who dared to suggest that the official story was not entirely the accurate story and—most importantly—the willingness of millions to uncritically and unquestioningly accept “the official story” even in the face of seeming incontrovertible evidence to the contrary looks like another world entirely to that of the America of 1974. The era of the lost honor of journalistic integrity had arrived in America with a vengeance.
