Knife attack in Germany: public broadcaster NDR does not want to name the origin of the stabber to "preserving democracy".
Hamburg - With its reporting on Brokstedt's knife attack, the Facebook channel of NDR Hamburg caused incomprehension and outrage among its users. The broadcaster refuses, with an irritating justification, to name the origin of the alleged perpetrator, who, according to the police, is a stateless Palestinian.
The background is the bloody deed in a Schleswig-Holstein regional train on Wednesday. Ibrahim A., a refugee who came to Germany in 2015, attacked several people with a knife. A 16-year-old girl and a 19-year-old young man died. Other people were injured. The police arrested the suspect at the scene.
Does the NDR forbid its users to shut up?
The NDR considers the origin of the perpetrator to be irrelevant in the reporting. Naming them leads to a "discriminatory generalization or misinterpretations," the broadcaster wrote to a user who confronted the NDR with deleting supposed comments that named where the attacker came from. Norddeutscher Rundfunk told Junge Freiheit that it only deletes comments that violate the guidelines.
When asked if they didn't attach importance to a complete and correct description of the facts, the Norddeutscher Rundfunk replied: "Yes, correctness is very important to us. As well as ridding our pages of racism and xenophobia. This is not censorship, but preservation of democracy.”
The less is known about the background of an act, the more reluctant one is in public service broadcasting with the naming of the origin. On the other hand, the fact that other media commented very well on this is not a benchmark.
NDR gets criticism – and closes the comments
With the justification, the NDR met with little understanding from the users. “No normal-thinking person generalizes when the origin of the perpetrator is named. We all now have friends and acquaintances whose roots are not in Germany. In my opinion, it is appropriate to name the origin of a perpetrator. Nevertheless, to extensive reporting on this, since such acts now occur frequently in a specific group. That's neither right-wing nor a conspiracy theory, that's what the police crime statistics say," emphasized a young man and received a lot of approval for it.
It finally seemed to be too colorful for the broadcaster. After a storm of criticism, the comments were closed and stopped any further debate. “Dear users, thank you for your numerous comments and discussions. We are now closing the comments column as all arguments have been exchanged and we want to focus on new posts and discussions. Greetings from the editorial team,” said the NDR. "In this case, the social media team at the Landesfunkhaus Hamburg closed the comment function at around 12:40 a.m. because the discussion on this particularly controversial topic would otherwise have had to remain unmoderated for the rest of the night," the broadcaster explained to Junge Freiheit the decision.
Source: Junge Freiheit
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