A disservice to all

The Young Digital Economy Advisory Board uses the darkest autocratic rhetoric in its position paper. The excuses do nothing to ease the situation. In the end, all start-ups suffer the damage.

First of all, perhaps something positive: the Young Digital Economy Advisory Board has written something that has reached a broad public. Until now, the committee, which is based at the Federal Ministry of Economics, has flown under the radar since it was founded in 2013. The flip side of the coin: this attention was not for good ideas to promote Germany as a start-up location, but for a frontal attack on freedom of the press.

In a position paper, the advisory board blames German journalists for the fact that IPOs in Germany have not really gone so well so far. So the press must now be held to account. The ideas include the obligation to report even on "small" IPOs, a clear name requirement for bloggers and "disciplining the press" to report objectively.

This incredible arrogance should come as no surprise to anyone who has been involved in the German start-up scene for any length of time. Many founders are so passionate about their ideas that they regard anyone who even moderately criticizes them as an enemy. Those who consider themselves saviors of the world see critics as despisers of the world. If the rhetoric of the paper doesn't send shivers down your spine, take a look at Poland or Hungary, where the pseudo-autocrats use very similar vocabulary. The last entrepreneurs in Germany to take such blatant shots at journalists were the Wirecard management board.

The excuse that it was only a working draft should not alleviate the worries. The thoughts were put down on paper and then published. Whether they were ultimately intended for the public or not is of secondary importance: After all, it takes more than half an inattentive minute to put a thought on paper in such a structured way. The fact that one of the authors told the Handelsblatt shows that not only did the discussion get a little out of hand, but that some of the founders are closer to Orban, Trump and co. than they might like.

The authors of the thesis paper have done everyone a disservice with their verbal dip into the toilet: Their colleagues on the advisory board, who had nothing to do with the paper, the outgoing Federal Minister of Economics, who was outraged by it on Twitter - and, above all, the ambitious founders of this country, who now have to fight the accusation that the digital sector is not taking freedom of the press very seriously.

Because of course every start-up deserves to have its ideas and business models treated fairly and for the press not to damage their companies with false allegations. However, no new laws are needed for this; it is already illegal today. Generations of entrepreneurs in Germany have fared very well with the existing sanctions. There is no need for a "Lex Start-up". Instead, we need an advisory board that stands out for things other than a questionable understanding of democracy. Perhaps this is a project that Altmaier wants to take on in the last few meters of his term of office. It would be desirable.