Michael Ebmeyer spoke up for the first time in the plagiarism affair surrounding Annalena Baerbock’s book “Jetzt. How we renew our country”. On Facebook, the journalist emphasized that he had nothing to do with the offending positions. He compares his role in the creation of the book with that of an “obstetrician”, but he was not involved in the “final version” of the text.
At the same time, Ullstein-Verlag published a short message: Ebmeyer had “extensive interviews” with Baerbock last winter, on the basis of which the Green politician then “wrote the book in its present form”. In his post, Ebmeyer describes the allegations against Baerbock’s book as “hypocritical” and speaks of a campaign in which his name should also be dragged in the mud. “Now” is not a “textbook, but a presentation of the agenda with which the candidate starts, and an overview of her way into and in politics”. Despite these “attempts at dismantling” one should not forget that Baerbock and the Greens “are the only ones who have a plan for climate protection, the most urgent political task of the next few years”.
Baerbock had recently shown himself to be self-critical. In an interview with the SZ she said that “in retrospect it would certainly have been better if I had worked with a list of sources”. You have deliberately resorted to publicly available sources, especially when it comes to facts. “But I take the criticism seriously.” Ullstein wants to “add additional sources to the book” in future editions, if there should be any, as the publisher wrote. In collaboration with other plagiarism specialists, the expert Stefan Weber has now found more than fifty positions that have been copied elsewhere or taken over slightly changed.