It’s a bit as if employees of the CDU were given the opportunity to take over the broadcasting center of RTL for a few hours. Almost happened, just pulled the emergency brake, not on TV, but on the Instagram photo network.
On Wednesday, the two operators of the Instagram channel @ insta.politik, which was visited with a maximum of medium numbers, announced in a post, on Thursday the Instagram profile of RTL news to take over. Popcorn Emoji. So far, so common on social media, where large channels with takeovers like this hand over the helm to other people for a limited time and thus advertise each other. But not if one account belongs to a broadcaster and the other two CDU employees on a more secret mission.
The account with 15,000 followers is operated by “Nine and Lara”, according to the self-description on Instagram. The two want to take their followers “behind the scenes of the Bundestag” with them. “Private declaration account” is also there. There is nowhere that the operators, with full names Janine Klose and Lara Urbaniak, both work for the CDU. Urbaniak is a consultant in the CDU press office and Klose is a research assistant in the office of the CDU member of the Bundestag Patrick Sensburg. Apparently, that was not clear to anyone at RTL either: the channel of the news broadcast would be a hair’s breadth RTL news was controlled for one day by the CDU press office.
“Unfortunately, the editors-in-chief only found out about the planned takeovers late.”
The editor-in-chief of RTL apparently only became aware of the outrage on Twitter on Wednesday. On Thursday, RTL canceled the takeover: “The takeover will not take place. There is basically no takeover of our journalistic channels.” It is a mistake in the “social team”.
Apparently, several takeovers had been planned beforehand, the journalist Daniel Bröckerhoff is by his own account has also been requested. When asked by SZ, an RTL spokeswoman said: “The social team is in close contact with the editorial team, but works largely independently in day-to-day business.
The German Association of Journalists (DJV) was not long in coming and applauded the decision. It is incomprehensible how one comes up with such an idea – especially in the hot phase of the federal election campaign.
And while RTL has to try to dispel suspicions of being close to the CDU, WDR has trouble with the liberals. The reason is the science show Quarks, in which the planned climate policies of the parties are compared with each other. Testing is done in one contributionhow the Paris climate targets can be achieved with the individual election programs. The conclusion after about twenty minutes of detailed explanation: Actually, none of the programs has a chance of meeting the 1.5 degree limit in time. Only then comes the big end.
Did a result not fit into the worldview of an editorial office?
There is a ranking of the parties in it to see their green merits. It is assessed which party comes closest to the Paris climate targets. In sixth place is the AfD, which wants to withdraw from the agreement. In fifth place the CDU, in fourth place the SPD, in third place the Greens, in second place the Left. The unexpected winner is the FDP. Because, as you can find out in the article: If they were to implement their plans at a uniform CO₂ price across all sectors, coal-fired power plants would have to be switched off quickly. That would be one Quarks according to the climate neutrality much closer, but would also get a power supply problem. Cut, the moderator’s verdict: “We doubt that she will actually do that.” And whoosh, the FDP falls in Quarks-Ranking from first to penultimate place.
The scene seems almost comedic in its abruptness. Even though Quarks actually delivered a clear and informative contribution, the format has to put up with the reproach with this ending: Did a result not fit into the worldview of an editorial team?
The WDR tells the SZ: The classification at the end of the video comments on how realistic the implementation of the political steps is and is based on the assessment of several experts with whom the Quarks-Editorial spoke at length. “The editors very much regret not having made this clear enough. We also recognize that both the form of a ranking and the devaluation of a single party within the ranking were unsuitable in this factual contribution.”
It remains to be seen how the rest of the media campaign will go. A lot can happen in three weeks.