Wolfgang Stock (born Juli 5, 1959 in Hannover)[1] ist a German journalist, author, professor and managing partner of Convincet, a business consultancy for public relations.
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Wolfgang Stock studied history and political science at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg and the University of Oxford.[2] He earned a PhD with a thesis on the German European policy at the University of Oxford [2] and completed the Advanced Management Program at the IESE Business School in Barcelona .[2]
In the 1980s, he began his journalistic career as a freelance correspondent for various newspapers in the former Eastern Bloc countries, he reported during the period of martial law in Poland. He established close contacts with opposition intellectuals in the GDR, the Polish trade union Solidarity and Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia. He was an employee of one of the deputies of the European Parliament, Otto von Habsburg (CSU), and he edited the Paneuropean Journal. At the same time he was involved in the Paneuropean Youth. As an organizer and driver for relief transport of the International Society for Human Rights, he assisted, in the mid 1980s, Father Jerzy Popieluszko in his efforts to supply the families of the Polish opposition unter marshall law.[3][4] He was the first West European person who arrived in Danzig after the imposition of martial law on December 13, 1981, leading a transport woth relief supplies for families of Solidarity activist confined in detention camps.[5] In 1985, the then communist part of Germany (GDR) declared him a criminal person and denied him visas.
Working with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) as a correspondent since 1988, he reported, in 1990, on the first free elections in Eastern Germany/GDR. From 1991 on, he was political correspondent with the FAZ in Bonn. From 1996 to 1998 he was news editor of Berliner Zeitung, from 1998 to 2001 political correspondent for Focus in the federal capital, first Bonn and then Berlin. In 2000, he published the first biography of chancellor Angela Merkel. From 2001 to 2003, he was political editor and a managing editor of Germany's leading Sunday paper Welt am Sonntag.
Stock was professor of Journalism at the Gustav-Siewerth Academy.[6] He presently holds two lecturerships in journalism at the European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder).[7]
In 2004 and 2005 he worked for two semesters representatives of professional journalism professor for history at the Justus-Liebig-University Giessen.[8]
From 2003 to 2005 he worked for the media research institute Media Tenor.[6] Since 2005) Stock managing partner of consulting public relations agency Convincet GmbH (former RCC Public Affairs, among other things, the video podcast of Chancellor Angela Merkel and produces initiated.[6][9]
On 3 September 2010, the Polish state president Bronislaw Komorowski awarded him with the Medal of the European Centre of Solidarity in the German Reichstag parliament building in Berlin in the presence of the Bundestag's president Norbert Lammert. He received the medal for organizing the support of Solidarity activist's families and supplying the Solidarity underground with, inter alia, printing presses and "smuggling" of current literature from Germany to Poland, as well as political, dissident literature from Poland to Germany.[10][11]
Since 2010, Stock and the lawyer and professor Johannes Weberling operate the project Wiki-Watch within the Study and Research Centre on Media Law of the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Germany.[12][13] Using an own algorithm as well as WikiTrust, this service evaluates the trustworthiness of Wikipedia articles and provides insights/statistic facts on wikipedia.[14][15][16][17][18]
In July 2011 Stock was criticised by the press for his ambiguous role as an advisor for the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi-Aventis.[19] The author Jörg Wittkewitz of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung claimed, that Stock rewrote articles in the German Wikipedia in favour of Sanofi-Aventis[20] and critically editing articles about the Institut für Qualität und Wirtschaftlichkeit im Gesundheitswesen (IQWiG) and its former President Peter Sawicki,[21] while at the same time being the operator of Wiki-Watch. According to Wittkewitz there was a conflict of interests and a violation of scientific standards as Stock concealed the fact about his job for Sanofis.
Sanofi-Aventis' press office meanwhile confirmed to Spiegel online that Wolfgang Stock worked an advisor for Sanofi-Aventis since July 2009 [22]