The controversial column of a “taz” author triggered a medium quake in Berlin. Interior Minister Seehofer first threatened to file a criminal complaint, but then withdrew. The journalist herself is obviously under massive threat.
According to a media report, the author of a column critical of the police for the Berlin daily newspaper “taz” is trying to protect the police. As “Focus Online” writes, the journalist asked the police for a consultation and security interview. It had previously been threatened massively. The news portal referred to Berlin police circles.
After the publication of the column, in which the author pleads for officials to work on garbage dumps if the police were abolished, “numerous phone calls and emails with threatening content have been received”. Some reactions were “classified as a direct threat to the physical well-being of the journalist,” it said. Officers from a police section near the “taz” editorial office would now take care of the security of the editorial team.
Seehofer: “Disinhibition of the words”
The column published in the middle of the month had made politically significant waves. Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer spoke of a “disinhibition of words” and in the meantime considered a complaint against the authorwhat from different representatives from the media and politics was seen as an attack on freedom of the press.
The CSU politician rowed back on Thursday and instead invited the “taz” chief editor to his ministry for an interview. However, on Saturday he defended his approach. With the threat of a criminal complaint, he had pursued the goal of initiating a public debate about the “unspeakable article” in the “taz”, he told the “Augsburger Allgemeine”.
Even in democracy, the opinion and Freedom of the press their limits, Seehofer continued. Nobody has the right to belittle other people, no matter which group they belong to, with inhuman language. “I remain convinced that this article fulfills criminal offenses. The investigative authorities are now responsible for investigating this.”
According to the Berlin public prosecutor’s office, more than 25 criminal complaints were received by the police in response to the column. Hundreds of complaints were received by the German Press Council, which is the self-regulation of the press.
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