The former Federal Minister of Agriculture Julia Klöckner is repeatedly criticized.Image: dpa / Harald Tittel
inland
Former Federal Minister of Agriculture Julia Klöckner (CDU) has long been the focus of public criticism. Her advances on the subject of animal welfare were always not enough for the animal rights activists, then she advertised cheap meat and there was also talk of meetings with the highly criticized Nestlé group.
The watson app for your smartphone
Now, however, she is being accused of something that has absolutely nothing to do with agriculture. During an appearance on the YouTube format of the former “Bild” editor Ralf Schuler, Klöckner railed against journalists from the public service.
The CDU politician also spoke out against ARD presenter Anne Will.
Literally she said:
“If you evaluate how posts are designed, I see employees of public broadcasters starting real hatred and hate calls against the Union. For example, if they go to Anne Will on the show or are asked, they know that everyone is against her, including the presenter.”
Klöckner: “Journalists act like spokesmen for the Greens and SPD”
Public broadcasters made themselves vulnerable, Klöckner continues. “We only have to look at the Twitter history to see the verve with which some of the journalists already act like press spokesmen for the Greens or the SPD.” At the World Cup, royal weddings, christenings or funerals, the broadcasters are represented by several teams, and at an important plenary debate, no other broadcaster except Phoenix broadcasts the events.
Klöckner received a lot of criticism on Twitter. There was talk of conspiracy theories and also that the CDU now the speech of supporters of the ex-US president who was voted out donald trump used.
In fact, says political scientist and communications expert Johannes Hillje, the CDU is shooting itself in the foot with such attacks. On Wednesday evening, Hillje shared several evaluation graphics from surveys on the population’s trust in media institutions.
He wrote: “Why the ÖRR bashing by CDU politicians (beyond democratic responsibility) is not worthwhile – see Julia Klöckner, who speaks of ‘SPD and Greens press spokesmen’ and accuses Anne Will of anti-CDU debates.”
The graphics show: 84 percent of Union supporters find the reporting by public broadcasters balanced, 88 percent of CDU/CSU voters consider the television stations to be credible. And only ten percent think that reporting from public broadcasters can be dispensed with.
The data from the surveys quoted by Hillje come from the opinion research institute Infratest Dimap.
Finally, Hillje draws a devastating conclusion.
Running a campaign against the media that enjoys trust, credibility and a balanced image among supporters of the Union cannot work. Such a campaign also “lacks any responsibility for the democratic public in Klöckner’s clumsy style”.
Klöckner himself has not yet publicly commented on the allegations.
Julia Klöckner is now considered the economic policy face of the CDU. Before that she was Minister of Agriculture.Image: dpa / Michael Kappeler
In fact, at the beginning of the year there was a big rift between the Union and the ÖRR. After an Instagram video by the satirist and freelance WDR employee Jean-Philippe Kindler, CDU General Secretary Mario Czaja wrote a letter to the director of the public broadcaster to distance himself and demanded personal consequences. In the video, Kindler declared the CDU “our enemy” and called for “radicalization against the shit party”.
In addition to the large parties that are represented in the Bundestag, there are numerous small and very small parties in Germany. One of them is the pan-European party Volt. The German section has now been in existence for six years – the party met in Potsdam for the federal party conference on the last weekend in January.
