The Suez Crisis of 1956 and 1957 in West German Television News

Abstract

From the mid-1950s onwards, the number of television viewers in West Germany increased rapidly and television became the “window to the world” for many people. Through audio-visual reporting the people were informed so that they could feel save as they know what had happened in the world, especially in times of the Cold War. The Suez Crisis of 1956/1957 was one of the Cold War conflicts that television was able to report on continuously and thus demonstrate its advantages. The Suez Crisis has to be considered not only in the context of the larger, geopolitical conflict between East and West, but also in a decolonization context, and it affected the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in several ways. The daily newscast Tagesschau, and the weekly compilation Wochenspiegel was able to convey images from a distant region with high actuality. In the beginning, Tagesschau used material from the cinema newsreel and followed its style, but the news editors very soon developed their own strategies of modern reporting. This article outlines the style of West German television news in the 1950s as well as the routines and ways of reporting, which continue in news production today.