Westdeutscher Rundfunk has a compliance problem.

Unlike the RBB, it's not about excess in the channel management, but about the question of what and who fits the program profile of the public broadcaster and what doesn't.

“Radicalization against this shitty party”

Michael Hanfeld

responsible editor for feuilleton online and "media".

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One case concerns the satirist, moderator and "German-speaking champion in the poetry slam" of 2018, Jean-Philippe Kindler.

In his New Year's message on Instagram, he called for hate speech against the CDU.

"Let's put it bluntly," it says: "The CDU is our enemy." He wanted "radicalization against this shitty party" because - after the riots on New Year's Eve, the question was asked who started them, or as Kindler says , there were politicians who said "that it was the bad foreigners" who banged, or who said that a "failed migration policy" was responsible for the fact that "our task forces" (here he stretches the letters to make it particularly ridiculous to sound) would be endangered.

"The agitation has to begin"

At this point, according to Kindler, "the political exchange and the agitation has to begin." That is "incitement" and that is exactly what he wants to "call for - I mean quite honestly, completely without irony".

After all, it can't be the case that Germans stand up and propagate their "fascist fantasies of a politics of ethnic cleanliness unchallenged by the majority society".

Anyone who opposes the "universalist idea, who doubts that people should be treated equally and as equals, must be fought in the most radical way as a political enemy".

That's what it says on Kindler's Instagram account, where there are still a few tirades of this kind.

You don't necessarily have to take that for satire, despite the double negation that Kindler uses from time to time.

Rather, it appears like the real edition of the fictional character "Gernot Hassknecht" from the "heute show" on ZDF.

With Kindler there is pure contempt, from a political point of view that can be clearly located, which the moderator marked, for example, in April of last year when he was talking to two colleagues about his new television talk show " on WDR 5, where he has a show himself. Clinch” was allowed to apply.

Then he announced in passing that he had just left the Left Party.

It goes without saying that Kindler's yelling is not well received by the CDU.

Secretary General Mario Czaja announced that he would complain to the director.

The broadcaster is evasive when asked by the FAZ: “The WDR assumes no responsibility for the private statements of anyone.

There is a strict separation of editorial and private accounts in WDR.

Since the guidelines in question were revised, the impression that WDR is responsible for the content can no longer be given on private accounts.”

Jokes about sex with short people

In the second compliance case in recent days, the sender is clearer.

It's about the comedian Moritz Neumeier, who cracked jokes about pedophilia and sex with short people in a program that are not quotable and that the WDR cut from the program called "Funny" after they became known.

Neumeier, the broadcaster said, has been speaking out "in his stage programs and publications for a long time and continuously against hate speech and prejudice" and "stands up for respect and tolerance".

In the program in question, he addresses “dealing with pedophilia and vigilantism.

However, the reactions have shown that his approach is perceived as hurtful and trivializing.

We take the criticism very seriously and have therefore edited the program and cut out the relevant passage and made this transparent.

The artist has also independently apologized for the fact that his words were ambiguous and hurtful.”

Neumeier did in fact say that in an interview with a journalist from the Funke media group, but he pointed out that it was not his concern that “acting out these tendencies should be normalized or played down”.

"The conversation itself on this topic" he considers "important".

If he "injured and triggered those affected", he says he is "endlessly sorry".

Since this happened, it "doesn't matter at all what my intention was.

Then it was a mistake to say what I said.”

Let's type this sentence, you will definitely not hear it in the other compliance case that is pending at the WDR.