Thomas Deichmann

Early life and career

Deichmann studied Civil Engineering at TU Darmstadt. In 1992, after earlier political activities, he began to work as an editor and journalist, writing first about international relations and then increasingly about issues to do with the natural sciences and their role in society.

Bosnia

In 1997, Deichmann received international attention when he published articles on the civil war in the former Yugoslavia (first in German, then in English and other languages). In one of these articles, Deichmann claimed that a frequently published image from August 1992, showing the Bosnian Muslim Fikret Alić behind barbed wire in Trnopolje camp was faked. Deichmann asserted that the British reporters from ITN, Penny Marshall and Ian Williams, had actually stood inside a compound surrounded by a barbed wire fence and from there filmed their famous pictures.

In February and 2000, to a libel case at the British High Court in London against LM magazine. At the beginning of his summation, High Court Judge Morland defined what the libel case was about: “Members of the jury, you may well think that in a democratic society it is vital that journalists are fearless, investigative reporters. It is, you may well think, of the utmost importance that they are accurate and fair reporters. It is right that one journalist, if he considers that another journalist has been inaccurate, unfair and misleading, should say so. But this case, you may think, is not about whether Penny Marshall and Ian Williams have been inaccurate, unfair or misleading; the nub of this case is whether the defendants have established that Penny Marshall and Ian Williams have deliberately – I emphasize that word, 'deliberately’ – compiled misleading television footage.’” LM could not prove such a deliberate mistake and lost the case.

Before Deichmann wrote the article about Trnopolje camp he had criticised Pulitzer Prize journalist Roy Gutman for biased reporting. He also appeared as an expert witness for the defence of the Bosnian Serb soldier Duško Tadić during the first case of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 1994.

Writings on Green and science issues

Since the late 1990s Deichmann’s journalistic focus shifted increasingly to the role played by green NGOs. For example, he blamed Greenpeace for running campaigns against Green Biotechnology that lacked scientific proof. In 2009, Deichmann received the InnoPlanta Journalism Award for his coverage of Plant Biotechnology. With Detlev Ganten and Thilo Spahl he published the book "Die Steinzeit steckt uns in den Knochen" (The Stone Ages is still in our bones), which was voted German Science Book of the Year in 2010. His articles and writings have appeared in numerous countries and have been translated into a number of languages. Newspapers and magazines that carried his journalism include Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Welt, Financial Times, Cicero (Germany), Spiked (UK), Der Standard (Austria), Die Weltwoche (Switzerland), Mediterranean Quarterly (US). Deichmann is the author of several books published by Suhrkamp Verlag, Eichborn Verlag, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag (dtv) and Piper Verlag.

In recent years, Deichmann has criticised the tendency to moralise International Relations. Another subject of his writing has been the growing influence of green ideas, something he calls “Ecologism”, as well as Consumer Protection policies – developments he views as symptoms of a deep-seated social misanthropy, of governments that lack any vision of the future and thus promote fear and a nanny state. Deichmann calls himself a “Future Optimist.”

Other activities

Deichmann was active as a speaker, coach, and chair for a number of institutions, including the European Science Open Forum Munich, Cologne Institut for Media Studies, Henri Nannen Journalism School Berlin, Free University Berlin, Battle of Ideas London, F.A.Z.-Institut Frankfurt, Ludwig von Mises Institute Brussels, and the German Institute for Public Affairs Berlin. He also worked as an evaluator of research applications for the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and as an expert for the Committee for Education, Science and Technology of the German Parliament. Since 1997, Deichmann has travelled frequently to the Balkans with Austrian writer Peter Handke. He has organised photo exhibitions about these trips and also written about them.