The storms in North Rhine-Westphalia triggered a flood disaster. The consequences are devastating, several people died. Now criticism of the WDR is loud. The broadcaster had not met its responsibility.
Photo series with 20 pictures
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Full cellars, people on the roofs of cars, impassable streets: the situation in western Germany is getting worse. In addition to Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland and especially North Rhine-Westphalia were hit hard by the rain. The flood damage is sometimes devastating. Read here all current developments in the live blog.
With the WDR, public broadcasting has its largest state broadcaster in the area of the flood disaster. There, in North Rhine-Westphalia, several people have already lost their lives. A 77-year-old man died in his flooded cellar in the Unna district, and a senior citizen died in his cellar in Solingen near Wuppertal. On Thursday morning, the fire brigade also found two dead in flooded cellars in Cologne. Two firefighters also lost their lives during rescue work in Altena and Werdohl.
The fact that the WDR reported little or no report of the momentous flood is now causing displeasure. The editor-in-chief of the media magazine “DWDL”, Thomas Lückerath, wrote a comment on the night from Wednesday to Thursday entitled “Failure to provide assistance: WDR leaves the West in the lurch” and described the station’s program as a “total failure”. According to this, private program providers made a greater contribution to educating the population than the public broadcaster did.
The WDR broadcasts “From Dream to Terror – Munich 72”
In Wuppertal, the private broadcaster Radio Wuppertal was “live on air with a special broadcast until late at night.” At WDR, on the other hand, the ARD Popnacht was on the radio on WDR 2, and after 10.30 p.m. there was no more information about the weather in NRW on TV. It went on for three hours, including the documentary “Vom Traum zum Terror – München 72” on television.
Critical voices also increased on Twitter. For example, when commenting on the opinion of “DWDL”, one user said: “If the comment about the reporting is faster than the reporting itself, you have done something wrong.” Another user asked when the WDR would include a special program and in a further comment it was said that the lack of coverage was definitely due to the “vacation time”.
It is by no means the first time that WDR’s programming has been criticized. When reporting on the storm on Whit Monday in 2014, weather expert Jörg Kachelmann, among others, blamed the broadcaster for the fatalities of the flood disaster because people were not informed in good time and well enough. At that time, a WDR spokesman said at the request of media journalist Stefan Niggemeier: “In retrospect, a crawl in the evening on WDR television would have been better. Our television colleagues discussed that and will handle it accordingly in similar cases in the future.”
“How to damage the information literacy of ARD”
The ARD as a whole and the main station Das Erste are also in the focus of criticism. The former studio manager and television editor-in-chief of the ARD capital studio, Ulrich Deppendorf, shot against his ex-employer on Thursday morning: “This is how you damage the information skills of ARD,” he said in his comment on Twitter, among other things.
Most recently, there was criticism of the live reporting by ARD and ZDF about the storm on the Capitol in Washington. When the grotesque scenes occurred in the USA, it was already late evening in Germany. At that time, ARD showed the television film “Forever Summer 90” from 8:15 pm, only interrupting the program for a ten-minute “Tagesthemen Extra”, in order to then broadcast the docudrama “Die Liebe des Hans Albers”. How exactly the broadcaster reacted back then, read here.
The WDR commented on t-online’s request. “Every half hour there were mono-thematic special editions of the radio news on all radio waves, reporters reported on the special situation on site,” said a spokeswoman for the station in relation to the criticism. On the Internet there was also “continuously updated information” on the transmitter site. “Further ARD night programs, such as the ARD information night, were supplied with information from the WDR newsroom, so that WDR 5 was also able to provide information every 15 minutes during the night in discussions with the correspondents,” it says.
Studio in Wuppertal even hit by flash flood
The broadcaster is insightful in connection with the allegations that Wuppertal was not reported appropriately. “We share the assessment that the WDR should have reported even more extensively from Wuppertal,” said the spokeswoman for t-online and explains the reasons for the failure: “However, the WDR studio there itself was so badly affected by the storm that After 3 o’clock in the night it was no longer able to send it myself. ” The studios in Düsseldorf and Cologne had to step in, reporters from the city could only deliver the information. “The Wuppertal studio is currently being made live again with the help of alternative transmission channels,” said the WDR.
Today, Thursday, the WDR wants to report “continuously and comprehensively on the storm and its consequences for the people in North Rhine-Westphalia”. Special broadcasts are planned for 5 p.m. and 8:15 p.m. “1LIVE, WDR 2, WDR 4 and WDR 5 have changed their daily program and have been reporting on an almost monothematic basis since today at 5 o’clock”, the spokeswoman adds in conclusion.
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