The WDR has to ask questions about how to deal with the controversial presenter Nemi El-Hassan the cooperation has meanwhile ended. This involves possibly questionable or illegal requests for information from broadcasters’ representatives during a series of conversations with the 28-year-old. The discussions took place last week before the final separation and had the aim of clarifying with the moderator and trained doctor whether there was a planned collaboration for the science program Quarks could still be possible despite the allegations against them.
El-Hassan took part in an anti-Israel, Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Quds demonstration in Berlin in 2014. She had distanced herself from that after the imageNewspaper reported about it in September; It was later revealed that she had recently liked posts on social media celebrating the breakout of convicted terrorists from an Israeli maximum security prison. Nemi El-Hassan denies anti-Semitism allegations against them.
The WDR had initially only suspended the planned moderation activity. The broadcaster finally ended the collaboration last week after El-Hassan’s guest post in the Berlin newspaper; there is no longer any basis of trust. Under the title “I’m a Palestinian – deal with it!” Nemi El-Hassan had accused the WDR, among other things, of having deviated from the image-Let the newspaper run. She wrote that she had to answer questions on the station “which primarily conveyed racist assumptions,” wrote El-Hassan. “These questions could not be explained purely rationally.”
It was also about whether relatives had connections in political Islam
Also in the Berlin newspaper A text has now been published that to a certain extent concretizes these suggestions and asks whether the WDR violated labor law in the survey of 28-year-olds. It is quoted from “detailed memory protocols” of online conversations between Nemi El-Hassan and “WDR forces of middle and upper management”, which the newspaper claims to have available. Nemi El-Hassan was asked, among other things, whether she believed in God, whether she prayed and, if so, how often. Another topic was whether she fasted during the Muslim month of fasting Ramadan or which mosque she was going to. El-Hassan was also asked how the story of her grandmother was spoken at family celebrations, who had to flee when Israel was founded, or whether relatives had ties to political Islam. This is a “sentiment analysis”, it says in the article: “The broadcaster was faced with a dilemma,” those responsible “had to rule out the possibility that they were facing an anti-Semite and an Islamist”.
The WDR rejected the accusation that he had violated labor law in the talks, “decidedly back” on request on Wednesday. The talks served to clarify the allegations against El-Hassan and “were shaped by the efforts of the WDR to find a basis for further cooperation”. The “alleged quotations” in the Berlin newspaper would not reflect “the character and intention of the conversations”. The WDR advised extensively because they wanted to give El-Hassan a chance. Nevertheless, the WDR does not give an answer as to whether the questions from the “memory protocol” fell like that and which station managers took part in the talks. Confidentiality had been agreed between the parties involved in the talks. “Therefore, we will not comment on statements made in these conversations, either actually or allegedly.”