Posted on 01/07/2016 12:08:58 AM PST by GonzoII
BERLIN (AFP) - German public broadcaster ZDF has apologised for delays in reporting on a wave of sexual assaults blamed on men of Arab appearance amid accusations Wednesday of media self-censorship of the inflammatory issue.The rash of attacks and thefts in a New Year's Eve crowd in the western city of Cologne was only widely covered by national media early this week, after police had initially reported no major incidents.
News editors of ZDF's flagship "heute" (today) evening news programme apologised on social media for not reporting on the incidents at least in its Monday evening bulletin, four days after the attacks.
"The news situation was clear enough. It was a mistake of the 7pm 'heute' show not to at least report the incidents," wrote deputy chief editor Elmar Thevessen on the show's Facebook page.
Editors had decided to postpone the news segment to Tuesday, the day Cologne's city hall and police held a crisis meeting on the attacks, he wrote, admitting this was "a clear misjudgement".
As the assaults have come to dominate German mainstream media, more women have come forward in Cologne and other cities about being groped and attacked on New Year's Eve.
The number of criminal complaints in Cologne topped 100 by Wednesday.
On social media, furious commentators have blamed the attacks on Chancellor Angela Merkel's government and its welcome to asylum seekers, 1.1 million of whom arrived last year.
The populist Alternative for Germany party seized on the attacks as "the appalling consequences of catastrophic asylum and migration policies".
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
As Uncle Joe would say, "It's a big effin' deal".
I can smell Arabs burning from here.
Of course they are. These ass hats only put it out there, after they were exposed for the POSs they are.
I live in Germany, so I can make these observations.
If you lived in Koln itself....via the local newspaper and social media...most residents knew about the episode by the 2nd (Saturday). If you used N-24 (commercially run TV news), you had the basic story laid out by the 3rd (Sunday) and going national at that point. The state-run TV news (2 networks)...started telling part of the story by mid-day on the 5th (Tuesday), and had a special report (30 min) on Tuesday evening to tell the whole story, with interviews by witnesses, the cops, and tons of political folks wanting to weep over episode.
If you work for state-run TV news....you are there to encapsulate or format a story to be told in a particular way. If you work for commercially-run news organizations....you probably can’t swap jobs and easily fit into the state-run operation. There’s a theme, and the theme must relied upon and trusted to be in the intellectual interest of the nation. No one from the state-run news empire ever resigns and goes to the commercial news world (as far as I’ve seen....it just doesn’t happen).
For at least a year, the term “lying press” has been used by Pegida enthusiasts (the right-wing anti-immigration front....primarily working out of eastern Germany). “Lying press” represents a news group which formats a story and slants it to fit some agenda. Statistical data from the fall of 2015 indicates that roughly 65-percent of Germans don’t trust journalists anymore and don’t believe the slanted angle of stories. The state-run news people noted this and have tried to use different gimmicks (transparency gets repeated a lot) to show they can be trusted.
At the heart of the matter is the mandatory TV tax (17 Euro or 20-dollars a month) which you have to pay for each residence. It doesn’t matter if you don’t watch state-run TV or the twenty-odd channels they support....you must pay it.
Adding to the comical demise of state-run TV in Germany is the fact that roughly ninety-percent of the Germans under the age of twenty-five simply aren’t watching one single minute of state-run TV. Ten years ago, the state-run leadership tried to design one new channel out of thin air....which would drag the youth over and funnel them through state-run TV. It failed miserably. In the last year, they’ve decided to create yet another special channel for German youth...but it’ll take at least two years to design the concept and present it to the public. If you were betting on success....it’s a virtual guarantee that it’ll fail too.
Over the past month, Poland’s new government came out with a major state-run TV change....their operation must report to the national treasury department...instead of some independent commission. This got Polish state-run TV folks all disturbed and hostile. Well...the German state-run TV empire got hyped up and blasted away on the Polish government. I think most of this was a defensive matter because Germans would like to change the way that German state-TV runs and the Polish idea might not be so bad.
My humble opinion is that some naive intellectual folks work at state-run TV and they really didn’t want to tell this story because it is all foreigners there in Koln who caused the problem.
One further note....if you go and view video from the night of the 31st (probably dozens out there in various places), you notice one odd item...there just aren’t any German cops. They (the cops) say that between the train-station and Cathedral (a 2k ft by 2k ft area)...they had 140 cops. Witnesses say there just weren’t any cops around and if they did see them....they were basically in some shadowy corner....seemingly fearful of being seen. All of this suggest public safety is screwed up and the immigration policy has twisted itself into a doomed policy.
It wasn’t islam per se rather it was a crime syndicate. Nothing to see here, citizens.
that sure sounded like a reluctant admission.
your last paragraph reminds me of the rapes in England. They went on for years because (according to police and politicians) they didn’t want to appear racist. The German police probably had orders to stand down lest they arrest only Muslims which would of course put the lie to the nonsense most of the political class has been pedaling.
Denkt dro!
Thanks very much, pepsionice. OUTSTANDING FReeper observations BUMP!
Good post...for an "Amie" ;0)
What do Barry, Hillary and Bill have to say about this? Hillary and Barry caused this massive migration and Bill has experience in sex assaults.
massive invasion
Much like the American media black on white crime
...and for all these years the Germans thought that WEST Germany had won the Cold War. Silly of them.
When the Cold War ended....the Wall ended...and West Germany suddenly got stuck with bankrupt DDR. The pension program, the increased VAT deal, the higher taxation to pay for modern infrastructure in east Germany....would lead most West Germans (over age of fifty) to really be cynical and sarcastic about this bold new Germany.
Billions and billions have poured into east Germany. The BER (the Berlin new airport) was supposed to be done in 2010....is still non-op because of incompetence and issues. It may not open until 2018. You can find hundreds of work-projects that were way over-budget and covered with incompetence.
The editors apparently felt it necessary to suppress the news until it was politically correct to report.
Sounds hauntingly familiar to our mainstream media.
Sounds hauntingly familiar to our mainstream media.
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