Gender language in public broadcasting: So close to the state, so far from the citizens

Created: 08/18/2022, 18:00

By: Georg Anastasiadis

Georg Anastasiadis, editor-in-chief of the Münchner Merkur, comments on the monosyllabic nature of politics in the case of Patricia Schlesinger and the exaggerated use of gender language on public television.

© Britta Pedersen/dpa/Klaus Haag

Merkur editor-in-chief Georg Anastasiadis comments on the silence of politicians in the Schlesinger case and the often exaggerated use of gender language in public broadcasting stations.

Munich – The case of the Berlin Raffke director and ARD boss Patricia Schlesinger is instructive in many ways.

Not only because it throws a glaring light on waste, self-service mentality and the failure of the control bodies in public broadcasting, which is evidently inherent in the system.

Ms. Schlesinger is not the first to help herself generously from the equally full pot of money, not the only one and certainly not the last.

Rather, the silence of the other directors, which persisted even after weeks of almost daily revelations, is striking.

Just as if there were no reason to take a closer look at your own company, to explain yourself or to talk about what you could do differently in the future in terms of a lived error culture.

The viewers also have to pay for the nonsense with compulsory fees

This fuels the suspicion among citizens that, once they have ducked away long enough and the wave of outrage has died down, broadcasters in the broadcasting stations want to go back to business as usual.

The eloquent silence after the scandal also speaks of the aloofness of a system that is so close to the state and so far away from the citizens.

The latter can be studied particularly well in the industrious use of gender language by moderators or speakers on public television.

Depending on the creativity of the editors, there are the most astonishing neologisms (“employer”, “Bürgerinnensaal”).

Linguists have rightly denounced the fact that a self-empowering media elite presumes to impose an artificial language on the "viewers" against their will, which is spoken practically nowhere outside the ivory towers of universities, state administrations and media institutions.

The right to education that becomes visible in this is a disrespect towards the citizens, who also have to pay for the nonsense with their compulsory contributions.

Slimmer, cheaper and closer to the citizen, that's what many would like the public broadcasters to do.

However, the monosyllables with which politicians and broadcasters acknowledge the Schlesinger case gives little reason to hope that the necessary lessons will actually be learned from it.