{"id":79204,"date":"2025-09-22T17:23:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T17:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/79204\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T17:23:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T17:23:12","slug":"culture-wars-rage-after-german-public-broadcaster-axes-conservative-talkshow-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/79204\/","title":{"rendered":"Culture wars rage after German public broadcaster axes conservative talkshow \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

German<\/a> public broadcaster NDR engaged conservative journalist Julia Ruhs as a television host earlier this year, largely to counter criticism that its current affairs coverage was too heavy on liberal-leftist perspectives.<\/p>\n

News of her departure after just three pilot shows, however, has revived a culture war over public broadcasting \u2013 in particular at the northern German outlet NDR.<\/p>\n

The timing of the news couldn\u2019t have been worse either. Long-time conservative critics have accused journalists at NDR \u2013 and the wider ARD group \u2013 of hypocrisy for cheering Ruhs\u2019s departure while criticising ABC\u2019s suspension of US talkshow host Jimmy Kimmel<\/a> over controversial remarks about right-wing activist Charlie Kirk<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy talk about Jimmy Kimmel and cancelling when we can look instead to NDR,\u201d said Harald Schmidt, former host of Germany\u2019s longest-running late-night show. \u201cNDR is where the editorial offices clean up after themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Ruhs standoff has transformed the little-known 31-year-old into a poster girl for Germany\u2019s ascendant right-of-centre camp.<\/p>\n

In her five-year journalism career she has built a profile as a conservative voice and has just published a book arguing that dominant left-Green narratives are \u201cdividing our country\u201d.<\/p>\n

The current controversy began building after she hosted her first show \u2013 Klar \u2013 last April, casting a critical gaze over Germany\u2019s decade-old wave of migration.<\/p>\n

A key pillar of the programme was an interview with the father of a young woman fatally stabbed \u2013 along with her boyfriend \u2013 on a regional train in 2023.<\/p>\n

The perpetrator: a stateless Palestinian asylum seeker from Gaza with a history of violent crime, addiction issues and psychological problems.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018Our tolerance could be our downfall\u2019: Extremism in Germany\u2019s migrant communitiesOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\"NDRNDR is a public radio and television broadcaster, based in northern Germany. Photograph: Jeremy Moeller\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

Six days before the attack, he had been released from remand because of a delay in another court hearing \u2013 for another violent attack.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo family is interested if the perpetrator is traumatised, psychologically ill or whatever,\u201d said Michael Kyrath to the Klar show. \u201cTheir loved ones are gone and we should stop looking for excuses.\u201d<\/p>\n

The programme revived a long-running dispute in Germany: whether non-German nationals and asylum seekers are more likely to commit knife crime, as Klar suggested, or whether the key factor is the higher prevalence of psychological problems among migrants and asylum seekers fleeing war zones.<\/p>\n

Two further programmes followed: about whether Germany\u2019s Covid policies divided the country and the challenges facing German farmers.<\/p>\n

Ruhs criticised the decision to let her go as \u201ccompletely incomprehensible\u201d, saying her team\u2019s work had attracted back lost conservative voters to public television.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Merz\u2019s absence from UN General Assembly is noted as criticism grows over Gaza stanceOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cMy team, and I personally, received an incredible amount of support from people who had lost trust in public broadcasting and its diversity of opinion,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

On a podcast, she accused NDR of \u201ccriminalising opinions that are centre or centre-right and a long way from extremist or radical positions\u201d.<\/p>\n

Daniel G\u00fcnther, the conservative state premier of Schleswig-Holstein \u2013 part of the NDR broadcast region \u2013 agreed that the decision sent an \u201cextremely bad signal\u201d and boycotted a broadcaster event.<\/p>\n

\"StateState premier of Schleswig-Holstein Daniel G\u00fcnther (left) with German chancellor Friedrich Merz at a meeting of state premiers last June. Photograph: Nadja Wohlleben\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

The Ruhs affair was triggered when 250 NDR staff members signed an open letter criticising her three Klar shows for a \u201clack of balance\u201d and \u201ctoo much emotionalisation\u201d, including suggestive background music.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe distance ourselves from this production and request an examination of the decisions that led to this programme being aired in this way,\u201d the letter added.<\/p>\n

On another public network, a talkshow host accused Ruhs and the Klar team of manipulating a grieving father.<\/p>\n

As the scandal gathers steam, right-wing media outlets have hit back. The conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine daily called the scandal a further nail in the coffin of German public television and journalists who \u201cclaim to be tolerant … but swarm out against those who think differently without inhibition and full of arrogance and aggression\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"German public broadcaster NDR engaged conservative journalist Julia Ruhs as a television host earlier this year, largely to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79205,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,356,13,14,6621,6,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,107,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-79204","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-germany","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-latest-news","16":"tag-latestnews","17":"tag-main-news","18":"tag-mainnews","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-top-stories","21":"tag-topstories","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-world","24":"tag-world-news","25":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}