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Only with effort can the camera be forced to lie: basically it is an honest medium. And contemporary vision, the new life, is based on an honest approach to all problems, be they morals or art. False fronts to buildings, false standards in morals, subterfuges and mummery of all kinds, must be, will be scrapped.

Ziegert, Dirk: Jugendfernsehen auf dem Weg vom Infotainment zum Infomercial. Die Magazine "Elf 99" und "Saturday" zwischen Wende und Wiedervereinigung. - Wiesbaden: Universitäts-Verl., 1997. - 318 S

Late in August this year, a message was widely broadcast by the international media. Filing their reports out of Stockholm, journalists from around the world presented their readers and viewers with the news that between 1934 and 1976, tens of thousands of people-more than 90 per cent of whom were women-were victims of sterilization policies in the Nordic countries. Supposedly, these repressive policies constituted the hidden side of the construction of the emblematic Scandinavian welfare state. The present article analyzes the sterilization claims, and, at greater length, opposes the propagandist aims towards which the dubious figures were put: as a vilification of the social welfare system, of socialism in general, of the political left, and of the character and intentions of Karl Marx. It is argued that, far from being a symptom of the social welfare state, the sterilizations were ended by the welfare state as the underlying justification behind the sterilizations-the eugenic aim of eliminating the poor, lazy, and otherwise weaker segments of society-became irrelevant due to the amelioration of the social conditions which had initially engendered the symptomatic poverty. 12 References. T. K. Brown