Ines Kurschat, herself a journalist at the paper Lëtzebuerger Land, was interviewed by RTL in the context of the ongoing summer interviews series.
Kurschat stated that the crucial importance of the work done by journalists is obvious. She explained that without it, we would not have been aware of the development of the crisis, the behaviour to adopt, or whether everything was still working as expected even in a state of emergency.
According to the general secretary of the Press Council, this goes to show just how useful journalists were during the development of the crisis.
The journalist stated that she could understand the criticism raised at the beginning of the crisis that the press was too faithful to announcements made by the authorities without doing its own research.
However, Kurschat explained that this never seen before situation was due to an extremely limited and thus complicated access to basic data. According to Kurschat, it is the government's responsibility to rethink its information policy while also adding that this seems to be a major challenge for certain ministers in particular.
Kurschat went on to say that this was a challenge for the press as well. She explained that in her opinion, media outlets needed to find the right balance between avoiding routine and not repeating themselves, while not forgetting topics which also need to be covered. She stated that there were also topics which had their importance even outside of Luxembourg and stressed that the main challenge for the press at the moment is to provide citizens with accurate information while also shaking up the routine of crisis communication.
