Crime, corruption, evil and sleaze took a day off on Christmas Eve - at least in Germany's Bild newspaper.
The country's best-selling daily managed to find a positive angle to every news development in Germany and around the world in the past 24 hours, treating its 12 million readers to a Christmas edition that was filled with nothing but good news.
On the front page there were cheers for the end of a transit workers strike in New York - and reports of DaimlerChrysler creating new jobs, the German army extending a relief mission to Pakistan and share prices hitting 3-1/2 year highs on Friday.
"Thousands of GIs allowed to go home!" Bild wrote. "Good news for American soldiers in Iraq. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced in Falluja that the number of US combat forces in Iraq will be cut by some 7,000 early next year."
During the rest of the year the popular tabloid-style daily titillates its readers with colourful stories of crime, greed, corruption, evil people, dishonest leaders, lazy bureaucrats, sex scandals and every other imaginable form of wrongdoing.
"We don't want to malign our times as one of only envy, gloating or a 'typical German' defeatist outlook," wrote Bild columnist Peter Bacher of the 18-page 'good news' edition that is a tradition at the daily calling itself Europe's biggest.
"But we also have no illusions about a 'holy world' which doesn't exist," Bach added. "We're not writing fairy tales. If we use big headlines to point out the good then we don't need small-minded people complaining. There is good in the world."
Bild's celebrity columnist reported actor George Clooney is paying to renovate a neighbour's house, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt may get married in Europe after all, Courtney Love's money problems are history and singer Pink may get married on January 1.
"German white collar crime rate plunges," read one headline over a story about 17 percent decline last year.
"KarstadQuelle gets rid of debts faster than planned," it wrote over another report on a struggling German retailer.
"Bavaria offers unemployed Austrian teachers jobs in Germany," read another headline. In Berlin, the newspaper reported 500 students were earning extra money on Saturday by working as part-time "Santas" or "angels" to deliver presents.
A 30-year-old blonde German woman sentenced to 3-1/2 years in jail for helping two gunmen rob the bank she worked at was pardoned and released after serving just two years. "Pretty bank robber let out of jail with Christmas pardon," Bild wrote.
The sports page had a story of a professional basketball star in Berlin now able to walk again and feel his legs one month after an accident that first crippled him.
Perhaps the most remarkable 'good news' story was about a couple with financial troubles in the western town of Bad Oeynhausen who won 125,000 euros ($148,500) in the lottery just two hours before their house was going to be auctioned off by a bank.
"There were people inspecting the house almost every day before the foreclosure and out of desperation I went and bought a lottery ticket," said Sabine H., a nurse and mother of two teenage daughters. "It was our last hope."
Comments
Comments are closed.