The editor-in-chief of the “ARD-aktuell” has acknowledged errors in reporting on the disaster in Beirut. On Tuesday, it came shortly after 17 o’clock German time to be injured in the port of the Lebanese capital, a massive Detonation, the Stand Thursday, killing at least 135 people, more than 5000 people and more than 250000 people in your home cost. The pressure wave caused damage in the billions. In the Tuesday edition of the “Tagesschau” to 20 PM, the lead topic was, however, a new Corona-concept to the German soccer League, as well as in the “days topics” on the same evening. Both shows brought in late in the news a result, short contributions to the Explosion in Beirut.
After criticism, the editors took on Wednesday in the Blog of the “Tagesschau” position: “It was a journalistic misjudgment,” write the editors-in-chief Marcus Bornheim, Helge Fuhst and Juliane Leopold in your post. Your rhetorical question: “we would have Had this event in the classic television better map?” – “Yes, we would.” With a Livestream, articles, and a focus-broadcast on the following day, you will have to catch up on the failure attempts. Further, it States: “images are also news and our aim is to make them eye-witnesses to the relevant events.” So, it was “difficult to explain” how “marginal Details” would have led to an “error chain” in the decision.
The ZDF decided otherwise
As the large Explosion was preceded by a smaller one, came many Beirut to your window to make cell phone Videos, which spread in social media even without the help of journalists. The discussion about the lack of ARD-reporting in social networks such as Twitter, was not unanimous: in addition to the more common allegations, the ARD Narrative prop or other favorite would have issues, see other voices in the dissemination of disaster-related images to a certain voyeurism at work, and took the ARD, therefore, in protection.
The competition at the ZDF, was taken under its different, and had switched to your “today”messages directly to a correspondent on the spot. This stressed, however, that, at that time especially, how unclear the situation was.
Sensations-journalism on Social Media
The criticism hits the ARD to a time in which public broadcasters elsewhere for the gap between television and Social Media journalism need to justify: In the past few days, two other representatives of public broadcasting had triggered their own debates about journalistic self-understanding and responsibility. The online-savvy NDR Format “STRG_F” was released interrogation videos of the alleged murderer of Walter Lübcke, and thus whose personality rights. The ZDF journalist Dunja Hayali streamed to Instagram scenes of the government-critical “thinkers”-Demo in Berlin, where you met her hostile. Both actors have been accused of in the connection in the network, to have at their sensational Online contributions, the interests of the persons depicted are not sufficiently taken into account.
