ABSTRACT
The previous chapter demonstrated the power of news frameworks to develop and sustain an explanatory theme (the immigration ‘problem’) which may itself be occasioned by a defining event (resignation of a government minister). Alternative, competing, explanations or opinions are marginalized or discounted altogether. This chapter confirms such explanatory power but it also shows that such frameworks can change in relation to political developments. For decades, the priorities of Cold War politics assigned privileged status to those East Germans who immigrated to the West. They were invariably welcomed as political refugees from Stalinist oppression. But things changed very dramatically on 9 November 1989, when East Germany opened up its fortified borders with the West, including the Berlin Wall. It made headline news as the symbolic end of the Cold War, and the major theme was the new freedom East Germans had to visit the West, many of them for the first time in their lives. But it was a huge movement of people and it created official unease about how many wanted to settle permanently in the West. ITN described the situation as ‘potentially almost as big a crisis for Bonn as it is for East Berlin’ (ITN: 1300, 10.11.89). Yet, since September that year, East Germans had been crossing in their thousands, mostly via Hungary’s newly-opened borders. Right up until the Wall opened, their migration was reported in biblical terms as an ‘exodus’ of people out of a political ‘prison’ and into ‘freedom’. It was seen as a propaganda triumph for the West, a crisis for the East. During the GDR’s 40th anniversary celebrations in October, the BBC reported that pictures of the latest arrivals to the West were ‘as embarrassing for the government in East Berlin as they are heartening for Bonn’ (BBC1: 1300, 5.10.89).
