Markus Lanz’s ZDF talk focused on the plagiarism debate on Annalena Baerbock’s book “Jetzt” – after that it was about the Corona situation and the European Football Championship.
“Do you think that’s serious?” Markus Lanz (ZDF) asked Oliver Krischer at one point. The Green politician had taken on the thankless task of commenting on the plagiarism allegations surrounding the book “Now” by Chancellery candidate Annalena Baerbock in the current Bundestag election campaign of the Greens. The fact that Baerbock and / or her ghostwriter have taken over entire passages from other texts such as Deutsche Welle or the Federal Agency for Civic Education, Krischer wanted to push aside with all kinds of placebos.
He called the obvious copy-paste, among other things, a “trifle” and spoke of an “insinuation” or “individual small sentences” that were adopted. Even when Markus Lanz clearly demonstrated using two passages of text that they were copied verbatim, Krischer stuck to the interpretation that the sentences were “not verbatim, but different”, spoke of “certain parallels” or copied “half-sentences”.
Markus Lanz (ZDF): Debate about plagiarism allegations against Annalena Baerbock
Of course, the ZDF presenter Lanz followed suit in his own way and described Krischer’s unsound argument as a “smoke candle throwing action”: “Do you believe what you are saying?” Krischer continued to try to answer the allegations by smiling away or by asking, one now has to talk about issues, to undermine them. Whereby unfavorable sentences jumped out: “This is Annalena Baerbock as I know her”. Lanz pointed out that the debate is ultimately about credibility and attested to Krischer, entangled in his line of argument: “You are a master at throwing smoke candles.”
| Guests at Markus Lanz | |
| Oliver Krischer | Politician (B90 / Greens) |
| Claudia Neumann | Commentator |
| Jana Schroeder | Virologist |
| Ulrich Schulte | journalist |
| Julius van de Laar | Strategy consultant |
The discussion was flanked by taz journalist Ulrich Schulte and strategy consultant Julius van de Laar. Both agreed that the line of argument of the Greens, to present the plagiarism allegations as void from the outset, has failed thoroughly. Instead of recognizing the proven errors as such, the Greens galloped with counter-accusations (“character assassination”, “right-wing propaganda war”). According to Schulte, the “line of defense cannot be kept” and “crisis communication is a catastrophe”, which is openly admitted internally.
In the plagiarism debate, the Greens acted as if “the blue sky was pink.” The judgment of strategy advisor van de Laar was similar, who recalled the first rule of crisis communication: “If you are in the hole, stop digging”. The allegations could have been moderated with an apology; instead, the misstatements in Baerbock’s résumé and the debate about the book now formed a “narrative about the election campaign” that was detrimental to the Greens, van der Laar analyzed. Not a pleasant evening for the Greens.
Markus Lanz (ZDF) speaks about the delta variant of the corona virus
The virologist Jana Schroeder spoke to Markus Lanz on ZDF regarding the quite relaxed corona situation in this country. According to Schroeder, the Delta mutant has to be taken seriously because of the higher infection rate. The “superspreader variant” (Markus Lanz) is driving up the incidence values in Great Britain. At the same time, Schroeder admitted that the hospitalization rate and death rate are currently only increasing minimally, as older people are already vaccinated and younger Covid sufferers travel a longer distance than the very old before they presumably die.
With reference to the possible long-term damage of a Covid disease, Schroeder again pleaded for a rapid vaccination of the population: “Normality is only possible with immunity.” In her opinion, the vaccines carry fewer risks than an unpredictable infection, because “Viruses can do weird things.” “When Markus Lanz wanted to know whether the pandemic was at least politically over after a vaccination offer for all people, Schroeder took a populist lunge and complained that children in this scenario do not seem to count as people. One sentence by the virologist was astonishing in view of the political handling of the pandemic: “I don’t know anyone who only looks at the incidence.”
Another topic for Markus Lanz on ZDF is the European Football Championship
Finally, Markus Lanz talked on ZDF with the sports commentator Claudia Neumann, who recently commented on some games of the European Football Championship. It was mainly about the many political events around the EM, including the rainbow discussion. The increasingly fierce commercialization of the Uefa tournament was discussed critically. “Is it only about money?” Asked Lanz. Neumann confirmed the assessment of which the reference to the venue Qatar for the upcoming soccer world championship fit. On the part of the new generation of players, “many mechanisms are questioned,” says Neumann, but for real change the pressure must ultimately come from outside. (Christian Horn)
