Kai Gniffke headed the “Tagesschau” |
So the new ARD boss made a fool of himself on TV
Excitement regarding the future ARD boss Kai Gniffke (61, SPD).
The SWR director (361,000 euros/year) takes over the scepter from WDR colleague Tom Buhrow (63, BILD reported) on January 1st. Gniffke affirms “that we are independent and committed to journalistic quality”.
The problem: As head of “Tagesschau” and “Tagesthemen” (2006 to 2019), Gniffke made decisions that even within ARD are not considered journalistic feats.
BILD gives examples:
► Gniffke decided not to mention the knife murder that shook all of Germany in the summer of 2018 in the news. At that time, a Somali asylum seeker killed a family doctor in Offenburg. Gniffke explained that this murder would only have been relevant “if asylum seekers were disproportionately involved in homicides”. “As far as we can research, this is not the case” …
► Gniffke also kept the terrible murder of Maria L. († 19) out of the ARD news in 2016. The Freiburg medical student was raped by the Afghan refugee Hussein K. and then killed. Hair-raising Gniffke’s justification: the “Tagesschau” only reports “very rarely regarding individual criminal cases” …
► In the summer of 2018, Gniffke embarrassed himself with a malicious comment on the alleged resignation of the then Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU): “He deserved a better exit, but now it was time.” Stupid: There was no resignation, only rumors.
