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Chancellor candidate Laschet, child reporter Romeo, Pauline
Photo: Screenshot / Late Night Berlin / ProSieben
The television program “Late Night Berlin” with Klaas Heufer-Umlauf on ProSieben is not a children's program despite its “Children ask ...” section.
Rather, it is an entertainment format for adults with only supposedly harmless children's questions.
Armin Laschet must have known that when he got into an interview with eleven-year-old child reporters Pauline and Romeo.
The conversation broadcast on Tuesday evening first put the chancellor candidate and now the broadcaster under pressure to explain.
Pauline and Romeo brought Laschet into such distress with questions and inquiries about the evacuation of the Hambach Forest or CDU right wing Hans-Georg Maaßen that the candidate reacted unscrupulously.
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When asked whether Maaßen was a right-wing man, Laschet replied, for example, with the counter-question whether Romeo knew Maaßen.
In any case, Maassen is not a Nazi.
Anyone who says that is unfair, says Laschet.
When asked what Maaßen had said wrongly, Laschet did not want to give a concrete answer.
When Pauline wanted to know what was good about Maassen, Laschet replied: “Why should something be good about him?
We want to chat with each other, we're not doing a promotional event for Mr. Maaßen, whom you don't even know. "
Now there is the accusation that the children were remotely controlled by the editorial staff during the ten-minute conversation with a button in their ear.
Accordingly, the supposed children's questions would in reality have been questions put forward by adults.
Laschet calls the program a "special format"
At an event organized by the employers' association AGA in Hamburg, Laschet spoke about the interview for the first time on Thursday morning. In an interview with the editor-in-chief of the Hamburger Abendblatt, Lars Haider, the CDU chief initially said that he did not want to evaluate the process. Then Laschet indicated, however, that adults had whispered the critical questions into the children: "I like to talk to children," he said. Here, however, the children would have worn "a button in their ear". "Children don't speak like that," said Laschet. He described the program as a "special format".
The CDU headquarters did not want to comment on the program when asked. Confidants of the Union Chancellor candidate had already spoken out critical of the format. Schleswig-Holstein's CDU Education Minister Karin Prien, a member of Laschet's »Future Team«, wrote on Twitter that the interview »raises questions«. You »discuss with school children almost every week. Neither children nor young adolescents ask such questions. «Prien:» Were children instrumentalized? «.
ProSieben spokesman Christoph Körfer said in response to a request from SPIEGEL that “of course” the two children were given editorial support “during and after their interviews”.
It is »common practice« for journalists to wear a button in their ear on television »in order to receive this editorial support during the broadcast«.
This technique is used by almost all adults, "so why should you deny two eleven-year-old children this common aid?"
more on the subject
»Late Night Berlin« interview with Armin Laschet: Kindermund ... by Katharina Zingerle
In the TV format of the long-time SPD sympathizer Heufer-Umlauf, who, according to ProSieben, was neither nor is a member of the SPD, the child reporters Pauline and Romeo also interviewed Olaf Scholz and Annalena Baerbock.
The show with Scholz has also already been broadcast, Baerbock will follow next Tuesday.
When asked, the Greens did not want to comment on Laschet's reaction or the concept of the format.
Read a workshop report by "Dein SPIEGEL" editor Marco Wedig on dealing with child interviews: Do child reporters really ask the better questions?
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