During a live broadcast of the Südwestrundfunk (SWR) for the CDU district party conference in Mannheim, a city councilor of the party interrupted and criticized the reporter until she broke off the report.
The journalist Natalie Akbari was on the TV show "SWR Aktuell Baden-Württemberg" on Friday evening to report from the conference room on the debate about the involvement of the district CDU in the business of the former member of the Bundestag Nikolas Löbel.
While she was speaking, the CDU city councilor and former Löbels office manager, Thomas Hornung, kept talking to her until Akbari broke off the contribution.
According to Hornung, the TV report was annoying.
The SWR defended itself against the accusation of having disrupted the party congress.
The place was assigned to the reporter - by the organizer.
"The behavior of a Mannheim CDU city councilor reveals an understanding of press work that is incompatible with the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of reporting," said SWR editor-in-chief Fritz Frey.
The SWR has published a classification of the incident on its website.
The video can also be seen there.
When the journalist wants to report on what the party conference is all about, fragments of sentences from a male voice can be heard first.
Then Akbari looks to the side, visibly irritated, and increasingly loses the thread.
Finally she picks up the disturbance and says: "I'm being interrupted here at the switch."
Then the camera pans to the man who is talking to her and Akbari says: "Mr. Hornung, we'll come to you later."
"I am a trained and trained journalist myself," is one of the things to be understood.
It can also be heard that he speaks of "insolence".
Finally, another man briefly comes into the picture and complains, among other things, with the words "That bothers immensely." It is not clear whether he is referring to the live broadcast or the battle of words between Akbari and Hornung.
Akbari then cancels the broadcast.
The dpa news agency asked Hornung about the incident on Saturday.
"It was reported live and loudly at the very moment when the provisional district chairman dealt with the allegations in her statement of accounts," said Hornung.
Therefore, in his opinion, the interview should not have been held at the same time and in the same room.
"I must have acted emotionally and shot beyond myself," said Hornung.
He added, however, that he did not regret the procedure.
The incident was also discussed on Twitter.
Users asked why the broadcaster was broadcasting from the conference room and during the statement of accounts.
Journalist Akbari then tweeted: »The location of the live switch was agreed with the district executive and approved.
The switch lasted 2 minutes. "
The former CDU general secretary Ruprecht Polenz asked the CDU Mannheim via Twitter to apologize to the SWR.
The SWR also addressed the incident on Friday evening in another live broadcast on Akbari.
The reporter then stood in front of the boardroom.
"That was actually a very, very uncomfortable situation," she described the incident with Hornung.
She had previously interviewed a critic of the current party executive and then wanted the executive to have their say and to summarize its position.
"I couldn't report anymore in a balanced way," Akbari said.
"After that there were still some relatively filthy insults that I don't want to repeat here."
At the same time, however, she emphasized that the majority of the CDU delegates in Mannheim came to her afterwards and told her "that they didn't think it was okay either."
She described the mood at the party congress as "heated up".
The conflict in the Mannheim CDU district association is also about the mask affair of the former member of the Bundestag Löbel.
This should be discussed at the district party conference.
Löbel had caused a stir nationwide because of the corona mask affair and finally withdrew from politics.
This involved commissions of around 250,000 euros for Löbel's company.
As SPIEGEL revealed, the company collected around a quarter of a million euros because it brokered purchase contracts for corona protective masks between a Baden-Württemberg supplier and two private companies in Heidelberg and Mannheim.
What was particularly disturbing was the fact that Löbel initially defended the commissions he had earned as "in line with the market".
Even in the run-up to the district party conference, there were discussions, according to SWR, about the role of the CDU district executive in dealing with the Löbel case and whether it should be exonerated. Some members accuse the board of covering up and wanted to prevent its discharge at the district party conference. Ultimately, the old district executive was exonerated by a majority of the members present, reported the SWR.
The newly elected district chairman of the CDU Mannheim, Christian Hötting, spoke to SWR Aktuell on the incident with Hornung on Friday evening and said, "The emotions were certainly high today in the course of the evening". But that was "at the end of the day no excuse that things got so out of hand." He could »assure you that this is not the position of the CDU. The CDU - also in Mannheim - stands for a free press that can do its job. "
The Baden-Württemberg SPD General Secretary Sascha Binder asked the CDU to apologize to the reporter and the SWR.
It is unacceptable if a journalist is hindered in her work at a CDU event in the presence of the State Secretary-General Isabell Huber.
"We only knew that from AfD events," said Binder on Saturday in Freiburg.
mmq / dpa
