The Interview Story

There was a interview story hyped up in the last three days here in Germany.....with AfD's Bjorn Höcke.  So I'll lay out the basic story.

First, remember that the AfD Party is an oddball party which is the ONLY party in Germany with an anti-migrant/anti-asylum slant.  That means that they take voters away from the six established parties as the public wants to send a 'message' about immigration or migration.  To some degree, news journalists also aim a fair amount of criticism at AfD, and virtually any candidate associated with the party. 

So onto Bjorn Höcke.  From the list of characters within the AfD Party.....I would probably rate Bjorn Höcke somewhere between number five and number ten on their noted politician list.  He has a degree in history, and worked for numerous years in the eastern part of the country as a teacher.  From past interviews, I would say he comes across as a nationalist, a direct speaker, and definitely pro-Germany.  He can be rather animated in speeches, and someone just looking at the video of a speech....might make the assessment that he's about 50-percent of the acting talent of a certain Austrian-turned-German dictator (who shall remain nameless).  I should also say that he's fairly clever....assessing him as typical poorly prepared for interviews would be the wrong thing to do.

ZDF (Channel Two, public TV) decided to do an interview with Bjorn Höcke.  The chief reason?  In four weeks roughly, there's an election in Thuringia (the state), and Bjorn Höcke is leading the AfD Party in this German state election. 

But prior to this interview.....ZDF went out on the streets of this state, and read off a list of texts.  It was a quotes-game.  Did this quote come from Adolph Hitler or Bjorn Höcke?  That was the question.

Now, you can sit back and ponder this type of journalistic game, and most people would just start laughing at the comical style of journalism that ZDF displayed.  But people on the street tried to hear the comment, and generally guessed wrong....so it was a great negative piece to lead off the interview. 

Bjorn Höcke impressed by ZDF's journalism style?  They get about five to eight minutes into this interview, and Bjorn Höcke finally says 'enough'.....either you restart the interview from scratch without the childish game, or I leave.  Well...ZDF's guy refused to restart the interview, and that was the end of the piece.

Bjorn Höcke then says.....'there will be consequences'. 

What's this mean?  Basically, it's a little threat that they might go and take on public TV, downsizing the media tax, or breaking public TV apart. 

So if you watched German TV on Monday.....the 'bosses' of German public TV did admit in some minor way that the 'Bjorn Höcke' or Hitler quote was probably not that smart, but you can't threaten public TV. 

I'll make three observations here:

1.  The typical AfD voter will tell you straight away that they consider ARD and ZDF (the two public networks) to be biased, and they don't watch them.  So the idea that the ZDF journalists had....that this Hitler-game would shoot down AfD in the Thuringia election business?  It probably won't work.  In fact, it just reinforces this type of voter's perception of public TV and confirms it as biased or corrupted.

2.  The threat made?  If AfD picked up the idea of lessening the media-tax (17.50 a month presently), and said it'd be a flat 10.00 Euro.....it would be a serious 'pain' put upon public TV, and ZDF would likely go away (don't ever bring up the history over how Channel Two/ZDF was created, because it would embarrass the ARD bosses).  I would go and suggest that in the age-group of 18-to-30....almost 80-percent of them are negative about the TV-media tax and would like to send a 'message' to the Bundestag about this gimmick.  The older 50 or more group? Probably more than 90-percent are pro-public TV. 

3.  If anything, ZDF just created an adversary-type environment with their interviews, and you might see more people who just get up and walk out.  I'm not saying that's negative....but it probably doesn't help matters. 

So I'll end this with a little bit of advice.  If anyone on the street stops you and introduces themselves as TV moderators, and wants to play the quote game....giving you only two choices on who said what....always answer 'Chancellor Merkel' no matter what, even if she's not one of the choices.