ZDF: Markus Lanz suddenly becomes a friend of the left

Markus Lanz was once considered a journalist who was very hungry for barbecued leftists. Today he even lets her finish speaking on ZDF. The TV review.

The social media department of ZDF was forced to defend Markus Lanz this week. After a Florian S. complained that the talk show host liked to interrupt his guests, it was said: “We have all learned to let the other person finish talking. In everyday life this is a completely normal requirement of courtesy. But in the interview you sometimes have to forget the good school a bit – in the service of the audience. “

The task of a “critical journalist” is to ask critical questions. And for this it is “sometimes necessary for the moderator to interrupt interview partners”, especially when they “evade the questions with their answers”. Because “if the moderators only nod off the answers of their counterpart, many counter-arguments would not even come up in the interview”.

The ZDF takes Markus Lanz under protection: “Forget the good school sometimes”

In order to understand why ZDF takes its star presenter protectively on his lap with such verve, the inclined viewer does not need to have zapped into too many programs by this Markus Lanz. Because, we can already agree, Lanz takes his “job” as a “critical journalist” seriously and “forgets” the “good school” more than “sometimes a little” – of course “in the service of the public”.

In the past, this phenomenon was mainly observed when guests from the more left-wing political spectrum were sitting on one of the South Tyrolean’s hot chairs. A valued colleague once wrote at this point that Markus Lanz “should never lead a talk show”. That was in 2019, and Lanz behaved so badly towards Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock that there was talk of “panic aggressiveness” with which Lanz “approaches his guests when they are politically more progressive”.

Markus Lanz (ZDF): Have you discovered a preference for the left?

Markus Lanz, the left-eater. Something has happened to him in the past few years. In the meantime, he not only eats his way through the right edge of the political landscape and with relish a Friedrich Merz or this pasture from this party, which only calls itself an alternative. No, Markus Lanz even discovered his love for politicians on the left.

That shows up early this evening. Olaf Scholz, the top candidate of the SPD by trade (you might prefer not to call him a candidate for chancellor with a look at current surveys to reduce his height), confirms Lanz right at the beginning that he can probably make an “excellent chancellor”. Well, Rainer Hank objects that one has to feel sorry for the SPD for years because they don’t know how to use the weaknesses of the CDU and CSU.

But Hank is a business journalist and former head of the business and finance department of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper. He has to say something like that. The words of the journalist Ulrike Herrmann, who was socialized through the Henri Nannen School, weigh more heavily. She states that somehow everyone knows Olaf Scholz – but that is exactly his problem. And since Markus Lanz is currently cuddling up to the left, it is Herrmann who is driving the SPD, represented today by the brave General Secretary and ex-punk rocker Lars Klingbeil.

Markus Lanz (ZDF) doesn’t let Lars Klingbeil get away with everything

In terms of content, the SPD’s election manifesto doesn’t reveal anything, says Herrmann. Only three numbers are in it – two of them (Tempo 130 and a minimum wage of 12 euros) can also be found with the Greens and the third number is the pages of the pamphlet. That sits. If the SPD wants to have any chance of a final spurt to the federal election, it has to slowly get into the pots, warns the journalist, after all, elections will be sent by letter from August. Klingbeil’s attempts at justification (we had the numbers first! We’re already campaigning!) Ricochet off.

Markus Lanz grins, but apparently doesn’t really have an appetite for social-democratic today, first of all without a bite of the cleaver. But the man, whose show recently received a nomination for the Nannen Prize, which is highly regarded in the scene, manages to put one point or another. When Klingbeil wants to thrash his phrases, which were born on the defensive today, and wants to secure that beforehand with a “if I may”, Lanz replies dryly: “Please don’t.”

And when Klingbeil of all people wanted to add Armin Laschet, who, against all odds, stood behind Angela Merkel and her policy of humanity during the humanitarian crisis in 2015, to have brought the “right-wing conspiracy ideologist” (Janine Wissler) Hans-Georg Maaßen into the team Lanz intervenes: “I won’t let them pass, isn’t it.” The moderator doesn’t care that Klingbeil is personally sticking to his lapel for having kicked the SPD’s own deviator Thilo Sarrazin from the party.

Markus Lanz spares Janine Wissler and praises Karl Lauterbach

Speaking of Wissler. Before the show, out of a certain sensational lust, one had somehow wished that the young left (by the standards of big politics) and the (from today’s point of view, former) left-wing tormentor Lanz would clash, one was bitterly disappointed today. Instead of firing up the grill and putting the newly appointed top candidate of the former PDS on the grill, Lanz prefers to praise his studio roommate Karl Lauterbach (“sensational health politician”). You rub your eyes in disbelief – was Lanz replaced?

Didn’t anyone tell him that Lauterbach is part of the left wing of the left-wing SPD party? Where’s your bite reflex, Markus? Unpack rather than, Lanz laughs today when Klingbeil is that Markus Söder had even failed to Armin Laschet. But the talk show host doesn’t really want to send off his application for an SPD party book that evening.

Markus Lanz: “Olaf Scholz on the verge of ingratiation”

Lanz describes Olaf Scholz’s juvenile foreign shame moment of the Federal Constitutional Court’s “cool verdict” on climate change as what he is: as “on the verge of ingratiation” to the Fridays for Future movement, after having just been “one on the lid ”:“ Now those who screwed it up are celebrating. ”One does not like to contradict him. Especially since the ZDF man makes it clear who slowed down during the coalition negotiations in January 2018 when it came to the fight against global warming: Markus Söder and – what an unexpected volte – Olaf Scholz.

Janine Wissler cashed in on the subsequent attempt by the blabbering journalist Hank to sell nuclear power as a healing measure against climate change. First it is Klingbeil’s turn and is pleased that the SPD has renounced its nuclear power-friendly views of the 1960s. Hank points to the Greens as the reason for the rethinking of social democracy. Wissler, on the other hand, recalls the real reason: “Because of two super-GAUs within 25 years.” Hank grumbles, but the point goes to the left-wing politician.

Janine Wissler demands that Markus Lanz suspend vaccine patents

Taking into account the other big topic these days, Markus Lanz asks how the two political professionals are doing with the approval of vaccine patents. Wissler is positioning himself and would accept a vaccination backlog in this country for more vaccines in the “global south”. Lanz thinks it’s brave. Even if Wissler had to remind him beforehand to let her finish speaking and to listen to “You are a clever woman”. This triggers journalist Herrmann, who asks Lanz whether he would say such a sentence to a man. The moderator parries: Yes, he has said that many times, even to Olaf Scholz.

Klingbeil, on the other hand, is messing around, talking about a production that needs to be boosted and his mandate in the Bundestag, and about the fact that pressure has to be put in place to ensure that everyone in Germany is offered a vaccination. Nonetheless, the discussion is of course justified as to whether companies that research with government funds do not also have an “obligation for the general public”. Markus Lanz summarizes: “So Germany first?”

Markus Lanz ensures the laugh of the evening

When Klingbeil tries to wriggle out of his dilemma – people under-supplied with vaccines in the southern hemisphere here, an electorate in his own country that is pressing for quick vaccinations – Markus Lanz sees his chance come: “You are a very smart man, you really are a smart man ”. Laughing in every seat, Frau Herrmann smirks, Lanz: “It had to be, sorry.”

Having put his best gag of the evening behind him, Markus Lanz finally lapses a little bit in his old role of a journalist with hunger for the left. At 15 percent, he writes in Klingbeil’s red stud book, “I wouldn’t mess with anyone else either”. Ouch. And Lanz goes one better and reminds the SPD general of “the old stock market wisdom”: “It always ends at zero. At 15, 14, 13, there “- art break -“ there is still room for improvement ”.

With a wink he also takes the top candidate of the left from Korn: “If you’re at seven percent, like Ms. Wissler, then you don’t have so much to lose.” Lanz doesn’t want to go completely from left-eater to left-cuddler. But somewhere the impression sticks that Markus Lanz made a little more effort than usual to let his guests finish speaking. (Mirko Schmid)