A 'Test' Story

 There's a front-page piece over at Focus this morning....written by Andreas Hentschel and it poses a curious question.

So....the 'fired' Constitutional Protection boss (Nov 2018)....Hans-Georg Maaßen had a talk, and he suggests that a 'test' of sorts be required for the journalists at the "Tagesschau". 

For those not familiar with the Tagesschau, it's the 8 PM newscast on ARD (15 minute summary of the days events....every night.

 Why run such a test?  Maaßen suggests that the political feeling for the news piece is left (maybe more than a little left).

In his talk, he suggests that the past jobs and current political behavior for the news folks be laid out. 

Irking the Tagesschau folks?  I'm guessing they are standing there and having a good laugh,  mostly because they would refuse to participate in such a 'game'.

Is the Tagesschau leftist?  In a normal 15-minute news piece....without commercials, and with two minutes dedicated toward sports and weather....you'd think that it's pretty hard to insert/inject a lot of political 'slant' into the brief news piece.

My observations would go to three key points:

1.  If you went back to Tagesschau nightly news video in the 1970s or 1980s....trying to compare against today....then yes, it's more political analysis now, than forty years ago.  You can ask the journalists why....with them of them just looking at you and wondering why you'd ask such a stupid question.

2.  These are all journalists who live in the 'bubble' of Hamburg....socialize in Hamburg....party in Hamburg....and hangout with like-minded people in Hamburg.  On occasion, they will bring in a new person who might have lived beyond the 'bubble', but it's rare.

3.  The Tagesschau folks do assume that the vast number of viewers are hyped up over politics.  If you sat down with working-class Germans....I might go and suggest that fewer than one-third of them have a keen interest in politics.....with a fair number of folks turned off about the stories delivered to them nightly. Party-X is deemed a Jesus-party because they are coming to save you, and Party-Y is deemed a Satan-party because they are coming to harm you.

So will this Maaßen discussion get picked up by anyone?  No.  The Tagesschau folks won't say a word.....it'll be the secondary news documentary shows that pick this up and cast 'doom/gloom' upon Maaßen.....that he is the evil one in this discussion.

Lets also be honest....if you were to devise such a test, and applied it....then the majority of the Tagesschau journalists failed....then what?  Where exactly will the replacement crew come from, and will they also fail the political slant test?  Even if you dismissed five or six of these journalists....where would they go or who would hire them?  You surely don't want unemployed journalists hanging around on Hamburg streets....singing tunes with a donation-cup in their hand.  

FYI, something that most Germans aren't aware of.....back in the early 1960s....ARD existed by itself (there was no ZDF or Channel Two).  The CDU Party determined that ARD was too left at that point in time, and tried to invent a corrective network that leaned right....bringing ZDF into the world.  This lasted for a few months, until ARD sued in court, and the federal court system agreed by the Constitution....that only ARD could exist, and so ZDF was brought under their management.  So instead of correcting the problem....ARD doubled it's political lean dynamics.