Saturday 23 October 2021
SWR has to cancel the live switch
CDU local politician pressures reporter
Local politics and reporting about it are often considered boring. This does not apply to the district party conference of the CDU Mannheim. An angry member of the council forces the live conversation of a SWR reporter, who apparently feels disturbed by him, to break off.
The CDU district association Mannheim is in the middle of coming to terms with the affair surrounding its former member of the Bundestag Nikolas Löbel. He is said to have mixed his mandate and his entrepreneurial activity and also used the resources of the CDU district office. At the district party conference on Friday, it was argued, among other things, whether the local CDU leadership was trying to cover up something. The discharge of the district executive was on the brink of what the SWR reported live – or rather wanted to report.
When reporter Natali Akbari is picking up to answer the moderator’s question from the SWR studio, she is interrupted again. The former office manager of Löbels, Thomas Hornung, is audibly upset and describes the implementation of the live switch as “insolence”. The reporter tries several times to resume her report. But Hornung also keeps talking until Akbari gives up with the words “unfortunately we cannot finish our transmission here”.
The reason for Hornung’s outrage is apparently that he feels disturbed by the reporter during the report of the district chairperson. The council member can be heard with the words: “I am a trained and trained journalist myself” in order to give weight to his point of view. Such interviews or interviews in the background of large halls during party or other meetings are, however, common. In this case, live switching including the space in the hall had been agreed with the district executive.