Bad enough that people refuse to distinguish between opinion and fact, as if they never had to do in their everyday life to compare their personal feelings with the facts of life. But when that happens to a media company, it's very annoying. The cabaret artist Lisa Fitz appeared on the SWR comedy show “Spätschicht” on December 10th. The contribution was announced by Florian Schroeder, the host, with the words that public broadcasters are always accused of not allowing diversity. But now follow an opinion that he, Schroeder, absolutely does not share and that should still take place.
The seventy-year-old Lisa Fitz then cursed the political mistakes in the vaccine distribution, not unexpectedly. She spoke of the one percent "panic maker" that controls "99 percent lemmings", and of the obligation to be imposed, the "wet dream of pharmaceuticals". When 60 percent have been vaccinated, the old life should actually come back. "Yes, where is it, the old life?" She called. So much for your personal opinion. Then she spoke of an allegedly planned EU aid fund to compensate the victims of corona vaccines. Alone, it’s too late for 5000 people. They have already died from the vaccination or its consequences. Fitz got the number from an application submitted to the EU Parliament in the fall by a politician from the right-wing populist Rassemblement National, which cites suspected cases.A death after a vaccination is not automatically a death from the vaccination, and private individuals without any prior medical knowledge can enter suspected cases in the reporting system. They are not confirmed.
The appearance caused little uproar at first. Before the planned repetition on 3sat on the weekend, however, the "taz" reported. The broadcast was not repeated. On Saturday, the SWR first announced that after weighing up an expected accusation of censorship and freedom of expression, the decision had been made to send the report “to prove the plurality of opinions occurring in the 'late shift'.” In a statement on Sunday It was then said that the criticism was justified, the first reaction wrong, because it was not about an expression of opinion.
Why does a public broadcaster actually have to prove something to those who only complain about science instead of worrying about it?
There are enough places on the net where you can now see the grateful re-use of the contribution.
Spreading rumors of the pandemic these weeks is hard to sell as satire.
And if in the end no one could differentiate opinions from distortions of fact like this, satire would no longer be funny at all.