Information for Journalist and media representatives

Our work here is sensitively dependent on our identities not being revealed and our personal well-being not being jeopardized. So far we have had good and less good experiences with media representatives who wanted to interview us. Some work has been done in an exemplary and professional manner, but sometimes certain information and agreements have not been paid enough attention. We do not want to assume any evil will. But based on these experiences, we consider it useful to publicly communicate our framework conditions to media representatives here.

1. Personal information (appearance, meeting point, place of residence, etc.) must be omitted or, if something of it should necessarily be incorporated into the finished product, discussed with us in detail. In any case, if something is unsure whether it scratches the anonymity, then please ask or omit.
2. Travel costs and arrangements: If travel costs are incurred for a meeting for us, then we usually ask you to assume these. If an appointment is cancelled at such short notice that the representative of SuH is already on the road or has to cancel the ticket, then these additional costs must also be covered. (For anonymous contacts, we can usually accept only cash.)
3. We want to see the anonymization before publication with the right of veto. We are aware that this is a red cloth for some media. Unfortunately, experience has taught us that this is the only way to safely prevent gross and dangerous errors. It is important to us to check our anonymization – depending on the medium and agreement, for example, the change of voice and the unrecognization of the image. For this purpose, we would like to examine and release the excerpts in which anonymized representatives of us appear before transmission in the form in which they are then broadcast (i.e. after the last step to anonymization). Precisely this demand is based on very bad surprises that we have experienced. *
4. Sudden uncoordinated change of contact does not lead to a strengthening of our trust. Probably rather to break off contact on our part.
5. In any case, we conclude a written agreement with the respective media representative, which must be carefully read, signed and observed. It must be observed not only by the respective main contact person, but by the entire team involved – especially by the people who meet with us personally. It sets out and agrees on the terms of individual cooperation. In exceptional cases, they may also deviate from the framework conditions described here.

* With regard to the release mentioned in 3., we assure you that the release is solely about anonymization and that we only propose changes in content if we notice serious material errors. This has already benefited many productions that have accepted this help and helped at least one item at a price. For media who have a stomachache to show the finished article to an interviewee, we suggest making the anonymization directly on the raw material before it has been integrated into the context and before b has been selected which quotes are exactly used by our interviews. So our chance of undue influence would be practically zero. In addition, not all team members attach importance to anonymization at all, which offers an additional avoidance option.