Four lenses: what media are for (role), how they do it well (craft), what they owe the public (responsibility), and how the ground is shifting under them (change).

* Role → craft → responsibility → the pressures eroding them: the topic's four parts read as one sequence, not a list. *

The whole topic hangs on four questions a newsroom keeps answering — and they form a chain, not a list:

• Tasks and role (Aufgaben und Rolle) — what is journalism for? Holding up a mirror of reality: informing, opinion-forming, watchdog, criticism, all in service of the truth.
• Working methods / craft (Arbeitsweise / Handwerk) — how is that done well? The W-questions, naming every source, the two-source rule, weighing each source's reliability before reporting.
• Responsibility (Verantwortung) — what keeps it trustworthy? Being factual, diverse and independent with critical distance — and reading finished pieces critically (verified numbers, loaded wording, cited sources).
• Changes (Veränderungen) — what threatens all of the above? Always-on online production, shrinking newsrooms versus growing PR, algorithmic filter bubbles, and AI-fabricated fake news.

Reading them as one sequence — purpose → craft → responsibility → the pressures eroding them — is what turns the rest of this topic's scattered facts into a single mental model rather than a pile of tips.

Go deeper:

• Journalism — the whole craft — role, methods and ethics of the field in one overview.

To hold up a mirror of reality to the public — by informing, helping people form opinions, acting as a watchdog and offering criticism, all in the service of finding the truth.

* One overarching job — an accurate picture of reality — served by four concrete functions, all aimed at the truth. *

The overarching job is to give the public an accurate picture of reality (German: ein Abbild der Realität). That breaks down into several concrete functions:

• Inform — report what is actually happening.
• Opinion-forming (Meinungsbildung) — give people the facts and context they need to make up their own minds, not tell them what to think.
• Control function / watchdog (Kontrollfunktion) — scrutinise the powerful (government, business, institutions) and surface wrongdoing.
• Criticism — question and challenge, rather than simply relay.

All of this is bound to one purpose: the search for the truth, reported in a way that is fair and factually accurate (sachgerecht).

Tip: The watchdog role is why the press is often called the "fourth estate" — a check on power that sits alongside the legislative, executive and judicial branches.

Go deeper:

• Fourth Estate — why the press ranks as a check on power beside the three branches of state.
• Watchdog journalism — the control function up close: holding the powerful to account.