Phoenix is ​​suspected of manipulation

BONN. It was an interview with the Phoenix news channel that had washed up. Gitta Connemann (CDU), Chairwoman of the Economic and SME Union, was certain that Germany operates one of the “stupidest energy policies in the world”. Foreign countries look “stunned” at the Federal Republic, which has just shut down its last nuclear power plants.

There are structural problems in the Ministry of Economics, said the CDU politician in the live broadcast last Friday. Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) runs his house like a “banana ministry”. She commented on the network around State Secretary Patrick Graichen (Greens) with the words: “The ministry is not a family business, but it is currently managed as such.”

Cut out three minutes of the Phoenix show

Harsh words in the Phoenix talk of the day. But if you called up the show in the broadcaster’s media library after it had been broadcast, you couldn’t find anything. Instead, the recording available there was three minutes shorter than the broadcast, like that Picturenewspaper reported. In fact, the critical passages towards the end were missing.

The full-length broadcast was only available on Phoenix’s YouTube channel. In the meantime, the broadcaster has deleted the non-original version from its website and instead refers to the – unabridged – video on YouTube. Phoenix has not yet given an explanation as to why the live broadcast was originally only published in a shortened form.

Time and again, broadcasts by public broadcasters, which are actually committed to neutrality, attract attention due to questionable manipulation of the material. Only a few days ago it became known that the MDR dramatically spiced up a report about the “Last Generation” with additional, alleged cries of pain from the climate glue. (JF)