The MDR is in trouble. In a broadcast of the Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, the Sachsenspiegel, on Thursday evening, an MDR employee recorded the logo of the tabloid brand Bild, which was also on site for their television station, in an interview with Jürgen Schmidt, the spokesman for the Dresden public prosecutor's office retouched. You can see a red microphone without a logo. That was probably rather mediocre thought out by the staff of the Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk. Because with its image processing, the MDR now achieves exactly the opposite of what the retouching should presumably aim at: Instead of removing the image in the image, the MDR Springer delivers a PR template at the expense of the contributor. The picture editor Filipp Piatov promptly asks on Twitter whether there is a “new guideline for dealing with media that is not funded by the GEZ”.
Something about the self-perception of the tabloid, however, says the preceding question, whether "an ideologically stable editor was too eager". An MDR spokesman then announced on Friday: "Sorry!" “Of course” one wants to “consistently work up the process internally”. The "individual case" contradicts "blatantly our journalistic principles as a public media company". The contribution is "corrected" on all channels (hasn't it already been?); they will also “apologize” for the wrongdoing in the Sachsenspiegel. Both the undisguised existence of the logo in the image and the correction of the MDR are necessary - no ifs or buts.
The specialist portal Meedia points out in an article on the topic that the Sachsenspiegel had already retouched in February of last year. As the Spiegel reported at the time, in the recording of a demonstration in Dresden, the image of the Hitler assassin Georg Elser disappeared from a banner without any editorial notice. At the MDR, the reaction was similar at the time: there was therefore no “editorial reason”. It is a "mistake" in the image processing. Afterwards, according to Spiegel, the broadcasting company sent a note that a graphic artist, looking for images for the moderation, had tried to edit the photo so that it would fit into a frame provided for it. Better: show what is. Also for "aesthetic reasons".