The Initiative Nachrichtenaufklärung (INA) e.V. (initiative news englightment) is a media-critical non-governmental organization that aims to bring issues and stories neglected by the media to the attention of the public. Furthermore, INA e.V. researches media agenda setting and media agenda cutting phenomena.
Throughout the entire year, INA e.V. gathers suggestions of topics that are neglected by the media. Anyone can submit their topics on the INA-website for research. The suggestions are passed on to our student research teams at several universities in Germany. Accompanied by experienced lecturers, the students research whether the proposed topics are factually correct and accurate and whether they have actually been neglected by the media or not. Based on the student research papers, the INA jury then assesses the relevance of the topics and selects the top ten neglected news topics. Once a year, the INA publishes the „Top Ten Forgotten News“ together with the newsroom of Deutschlandfunk. As part of the Cologne Forum for Journalism Criticism organized by the INA, the INA awards the Günter-Wallraff-Prize. Later this year, the first volume of the new INA publication series „Media – Enlightenment – Criticism“ will be published.
In 2015, the INA, together with the Deutschlandfunk (public-broadcasting radio station in Germany), implemented a symposium: the Cologne Forum of Journalism Criticism. Together with various guests and a broad audience a discussion about the current situation of media and journalism is conducted.
The seventh Cologne Forum will take place on the 03/05/2023 in the chamber music hall of the Deutschlandfunk.
In this context, the executive committee of the INA also confers the Günter-Wallraff-Price for critical journalism and moral courage. The price is named after Günter Wallraff, an investigative journalist from Cologne, who is an honorary member of the INA. Throughout his research within the editorial department of the German „BILD-Zeitung“ newspaper, he strongly contributed to the establishment of media criticism in Germany in the 1970s´´.