W.How far does freedom of expression go? This is a question that is currently bothering the SWR. The broadcaster dismissed the employee Ole Skambraks after he accused SWR in early October in an article in the online magazine “Multipolar” of not reporting on the pandemic in a balanced manner. “He uttered false facts and aroused false impressions,” said a SWR spokeswoman for the FAZ. The reason for the termination was not Skambraks’ criticism, but the “destroyed relationship of trust”. “Everyone in the SWR can express themselves freely. Limits have been reached when it is not about expressing opinion, but about deliberately discrediting the company and colleagues, ”said the spokeswoman.
In his magazine article, Skambraks had suggested that the SWR deliberately suppressed topics such as the development of the coronavirus, vaccine side effects or the situation in India, which has now calmed down. “That is a false statement of fact,” said the spokeswoman. She referred to a compiled list with links to contributions that the FAZ has. This shows that the SWR and the broadcasters of the ARD reported on these topics.
“He’s pretending he knows what’s going to be discussed in the editorial meetings,” said the spokeswoman. He does not attend editorial meetings in which topics are decided. So far, he has only taken part in a ten-minute stand, in which topics that have already been discussed are briefly presented.
Skambraks himself sees it differently
A few days after the magazine article, there was a conversation with his superior. A two-week break and public silence have been agreed to clarify the matter internally. Nevertheless, a few days later Skambraks took part in the broadcast “Talk im Hangar 7” on the Austrian private broadcaster Servus TV and discredited the SWR there again. He did not respond to the SWR’s offer to speak to each other again. The termination was then pronounced on Thursday. “The claim that he is looking for a dispute with the SWR is not true,” said the spokeswoman.
Skambraks himself presents the process differently. “There was never any talk of not complying with media inquiries,” he told the FAZ on Friday. The oral agreement was only about his social media activities. After this first conversation, the SWR no longer sought contact with him. With his contribution to “Multipolar” he wanted to show that many topics related to the pandemic are not being discussed in detail. Afterwards, he also received encouragement from other employees: “I would have liked this to lead to a dialogue”. The fact that he did not try to do this internally, but went public, “I have to wear this shoe,” he said. It pains him, “but also the SWR”, how things went.
The editors of the “Multipolar” magazine also made a joint contribution on Friday. In it, they accused the SWR, among other things, of the fact that the dismissal was intended to intimidate other employees of the public service broadcaster. The SWR is an example of the attitude: “You don’t want to question yourself, you feel so threatened by critics that you exclude their arguments as disinformation.” This method is “brutal and destructive”.
A matter of the German Press Council?
The uproar surrounding the case has now also reached the German Press Council. A few days before the termination, the German Press Agency (dpa) published a fact check on Skambrak’s entry on “Multipolar”. The headline of the fact check reads: “Open letter from a journalist contains some false claims about Corona”. In the article, the news agency reviews some of the factual allegations of the blog entry, including, for example, that there was no report in Germany about the easing of the corona situation in India through the drug ivermectin. Dpa writes about this claim: “The benefits of ivermectin are highly controversial. In Germany there are media (including the SWR) that have reported on the use of the agent in India and also possible positive effects. “
“Multipolar” has now lodged a complaint against the headline of the dpa fact check. The representation with the words “some false claims” is not covered, it is said. Roman Portack, managing director of the German Press Council, told the FAZ that it was currently checking whether the German Press Council was even responsible for such a complaint. Such dpa fact checks appear among other things under Facebook posts, the client is Facebook. “We don’t yet know whether the fact check was carried out in connection with a Facebook post or independently,” said Portack.
If it is merely a fact check on behalf of Facebook, the German Press Council is not responsible because the process then takes place exclusively “within the Facebook ecosystem” and the fact check by dpa is not considered “as a journalistic-editorial activity of the press”. According to Portack, there has already been a similar case in which the German Press Council was ultimately not responsible for this reason.
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