The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum is a novel written by the German author Heinrich Böll. It was first published in 1974 and follows the story of Katharina Blum, a young woman who is severely put under pressure and bullied by the press, who are accusing her of being an accomplice to a fugitive criminal.

This novel is without doubt a very strong example of how the press has the ability to misuse its power, which can result in the destruction of people’s lives. In Katharina’s case, all she had done was to fall in love with a criminal, Ludwig Götten, and to help him flee. While this is obviously a criminal offence, this was then completely distorted and blown out of proportion by the press. “The News,” a national newspaper, portrays Katharina as a criminal with no morals, a woman who is only after her own financial gain, who had been a cold-hearted accomplice to a murderer.

Through misquotations and sensationalist reports, Katharina Bloom is totally misrepresented, which leads to her utter frustration and ultimately results in Katharina murdering the journalist Werner Tötges, as she simply can’t take the abuse, public humiliation and denunciation any longer. This clearly shows how the press has destroyed Katharina’s life through it’s power of manipulating public opinion through false claims, which changed Katharina’s life, as well as that of her family, forever.

Böll clearly tried to criticize the sensationalism of the press through his novel. He was inspired by the fact that at the time, the German newspaper “Bild” had massively influenced public opinion with regard to the left-wing student movement by falsely reporting and misquoting facts. The newspaper “The News” in his novel is clearly meant to represent the actual German newspaper “Bild”.