Crazy? The FAZ's strange fetish with the Berliner Zeitung
"On to the hunt!" is the headline of a recent commentary in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. It's about a report from the Berliner Zeitung. It's hard to beat the absurdity. A commentary.
Jochen Zenthöfer, the author of a recent FAZ commentary, criticizes a report in the Berliner Zeitung about plagiarism allegations against Anja Karlshaus, president of Cologne's CBS University , published on June 3. The FAZ author claims that the Berliner Zeitung "teamed up" with plagiarism hunter Stefan Weber to pursue a "typical approach" for the paper and to use a "spin" to deliberately damage the reputation of the CBS president. He argues that the president in question is an unknown, insignificant figure, and that the scandal is therefore exaggerated.
The FAZ article is puzzling. Now, it's not the FAZ that decides what's newsworthy and what isn't—the article about Anja Karlshaus, for example, was picked up by RTL and T-online . It's also strange that this commentary appeared in the FAZ at all. An email that Jochen Zenthöfer sent to the Berliner Zeitung with questions about the report reads completely differently than the subsequent commentary.
In the email, Zenthöfer explicitly thanks the Berliner Zeitung for its report on Anja Karlshaus . The author writes: "Dear Mr. Cremer, thank you for your report on the suspected plagiarism against Ms. Karlshaus in Cologne." The fact that the FAZ employee considers the Berliner Zeitung article a "witch hunt" is not made clear in the email. Zenthöfer even praises the report: "You allowed all sides to have their say, which I think is great." However, the FAZ commentary that appeared later states the opposite. It states: "We imagine it like this: In the editorial office of the 'Berliner Zeitung,' topics are twisted and turned until they have the right spin." If an FAZ author completely changes his opinion within just nine days, one has to conclude that the FAZ is probably extrapolating from itself to others. Or to put it this way: What spin is the FAZ concerned about when it comes to reporting on the Berliner Zeitung? The fact is: Time and again, the Frankfurt-based media outlet publishes negative, dubious, over-the-top reports about the Berliner Zeitung and its publisher, Holger Friedrich. The recently published commentary represents another sad climax of this strange fetish. It becomes problematic when basic guidelines of the trade are ignored. The text is simply false. In his commentary, Zenthöfer claims that the Berliner Zeitung has recently begun cooperating with Stefan Weber. This is not true. The Berliner Zeitung does not cooperate with the plagiarism researcher Weber. Like many media outlets, including the FAZ, we report on Weber's plagiarism report. Every now and then, Weber also offers the Berliner Zeitung exclusive reports. These are reviewed by various editors in our company and processed if necessary. What the Berliner Zeitung does is not a "witch hunt," but journalism.
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