The interim solution is first of all: transmission break. After much criticism of a podcast episode about the Bosnian war, SWR announced this week that the podcast sack of rice will suspend for the time being – “until we have worked through everything”. The discussion about the controversial episode, which was published at the end of March, has been going on for months.
In July, the Bosnian journalist Melina Borčak published in the media magazine journalist a post entitled “Criminal bad journalism” and accused the creators of the podcast of spreading false facts and genocide denials in the episode entitled “Shortly before war? The fragile peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina”. Among other things, Borčak writes: “The podcast episode on the political situation in Bosnia escalated into an example of what can go wrong with dirty journalistic work and how editorial offices should not deal with criticism.”
The goal of the podcast is actually exactly the opposite of what the podcast wants according to self-description Reveal points of contention, “but not without journalistic classification and context”. Each episode focuses on a different foreign topic, sometimes a Russian woman talks about her protest against Putin’s war, sometimes an 18-year-old Frenchman talks about life in the banlieue of Marseille.
An ethnic Serbian politics student was a guest in the much-criticized episode. The young woman was born in 1999, four years after the end of the Bosnian war. When asked about the Srebrenica genocide, she said, among other things: “I wasn’t there, and there are always two sides to the story. That’s why I can’t say with 100 percent certainty what happened.” The Srebrenica massacre, in which Serbian troops murdered more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys in 1995, is considered one of the worst war crimes in Europe since the end of World War II. The International Court of Justice classifies the mass murder as genocide.
SWR: “We clearly see that we made mistakes and apologize for this.”
“Everything was wrong with this episode,” says Melina Borčak of the SZ on the phone, “the selection of the protagonist was wrong, as was the way the interview was conducted.” A spokeswoman for SWR said: “We take the criticism of the podcast episode extremely seriously and deal with it on an ongoing basis. […] We clearly see that we made mistakes and we apologize for that.”
In response to the criticism, SWR commented that it was a mistake to publish the episode: “Our classification of the statements made by our interlocutor was insufficient.”
At the beginning of the week, the editors of sack of rice additionally a special episode online, in which Melina Borčak is invited. She will be interviewed by SWR presenter Stephanie Haiber and SWR editor Karin Feltes. A rather unfortunate attempt at redemption. The interviewers interrupt the interviewee so often that it is difficult to listen, the tone is sharp and not forgiving. Borčak told the SZ that she felt provoked and treated without respect. “When you talk to traumatized people, you can’t just interrupt them while they’re talking about what was done to their family. Especially not with irreverently sarcastic questions.”
Melina Borčak thinks it would be right if SWR took the episode off the internet: “Otherwise everyone can still stumble across it on Spotify without knowing the background.” When asked, the SWR spokeswoman said: “We are open to all possibilities that make it clear that nothing is further from us than hurting or even (re)traumatizing people with the podcast episode.” The podcast episode is still online.