Gender trouble at WDR: the nurse becomes the nurse – “little linguistic slips”

Created: 08/17/2022, 10:31 am

By: Mick Oberbusch

In the eyes of many, WDR presenter Catherine Vogel made a serious language faux pas with the "nurse" (IDZRW montage).

© WDR & Oliver Dietze/Imago

Gender glitch at the public broadcaster WDR, the word “nurse” was mentioned several times.

Many believe too often to be slips of the tongue.

Cologne – Both gender and “public service broadcasting” are two topics that are discussed particularly emotionally by many people in Germany.

Many see the former as an encroachment on their own freedom of speech, many people call for a reform of the latter, some see it as fundamentally important, and a few even call for its abolition.

So it's clear that things get particularly heated when both of these topics are mixed up - as happened in the "Aktuelle Hour" at WDR.

Because at the fee-financed institution with its headquarters in Cologne, the term "nurse" recently caused an enormous echo - and outrage among parts of the population, as 24RHEIN reports.

"Nurse" days at WDR: Coincidence or something more?

What happened?

Within a few days, the word “nurse” was mentioned several times.

Too often to be a random string of slips of the tongue, as many believe.

• On August 10, WDR presenter

  Catherine Vogel used the word "intensive care nurse" when announcing a post about a nurse.

  So, so to speak, twice and gendered unnecessarily in the eyes of many.

  After all, the word "sister" in this context already indicates that it is a woman.

• When two days later Stefan Fuckert

  , moderator of the "WDR local time South Westphalia", repeated this "language faux pas", the outrage in the social networks was complete.

Criticism of the WDR after language glitches - "Wokest Sender alive"

For example, the language guards from the German Language Association (VDS) tweeted in the direction of the “Lokalzeit” moderator: “Hey, WDR, what is an “intensive care nurse”?”, and the author Jan Fleischhauer followed up: “I know, that’s supposed to be You don't say: But it's better to have tough self-service at the RBB than this foolish gender chirp at the WDR.

WDR is now being derided by many commentators in the social networks as the “worst broadcaster alive”.

Moderator Catherine Vogel expresses herself ironically

But what does WDR presenter Catherine Vogel, who got the ball rolling in the first place with her "wrong gender", say about the campaign?

On Twitter, she shared a clip of her "nurse" statement, with the caption: "Versprechen:in", meaning that she simply made a slip of the tongue when she said it.

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"Nurse": That says the WDR

The WDR itself commented on the "nurse" debate to 24RHEIN as follows: "In both cases, both the local time South Westphalia and the current hour with Catherine Vogel, it is clearly a matter of slips of the tongue for which there is no particular explanation.

Incidentally, the colleagues laughed heartily about Catherine Vogel's little slip of the tongue in the editorial debriefing, as they do about almost every slip of the tongue," says the broadcaster.

And further: “The WDR does not assume that female language forms always have to be given an “in”.

All employees know that too, only such small slips of language happen in front of the camera."