The film represents the media as vindictive and scandal-obsessed. "The Paper" only publishes conspiracies and disregards the truth. The main reporter, Tötges, frequently makes up quotes and distorts facts to make Katharina's life fit a salacious narrative of a promiscuous woman who aids and abets anarchists and terrorists. It’s clear that the media doesn’t care if she is innocent or not. She is a story, and that is her only purpose to them. He makes up Katharina's mother's dying words to make a negative impression of her and to sell papers. He finds out that her grandfather emigrated to the USSR in 1932 and uses this as proof that Katharina holds similar views. In his final scene, he makes sexual advances on Katharina and actually expects her to be happy with him for "making her famous." The fact that he dragged her name through the mud does not register with him.