The dark side of staged journalism

You've made it as a social provocateur when a characterization crystallizes in a word and is used by friends and foes alike. In the case of Jan Böhmermann, this characterization is "clown". He is called that by those who see Böhmermann as a manipulative self-promoter. And by those who see Böhmermann as the future of television entertainment.

The second group includes the jury for the Grimme Prize, one of the most important awards for television formats. She decorated the show “ZDF Magazin Royale” with an award in the entertainment category and justified it as follows: “In a world in which politicians act like clowns, real clowns have no choice but to become political themselves. That is exactly what the clown Jan Böhmermann, who has become political, does.”

The fact that Böhmermann moves in his show as a border crosser between politics and entertainment, information and satire, that this mixture is ultimately the basis of his work, can - sorry, Böhmermann haters - be rated positively. Crossing borders always requires courage, and courage is urgently needed in the German television landscape. One can respect this courage for unconditional escalation, which seems to drive Böhmermann, even if one finds the character and its methods terrible.

Conversely, what is just as urgently needed would be an intensive analysis of the show that was so praised over the green clover. According to the official justifications at least, this critical examination did not take place in the jury of the Grimme Prize. Böhmermann and his team pick out very different topics and turn them into "entertainment with informational value - or information with entertainment value, just as you like," they say.

What is sorely missing at this point, if only with a half-sentence, is a problematization of the new genre (taken over from the USA) of entertainingly presented research. With the revelation that the YouTube star Fynn Kliemann was involved in dubious mask deals, Böhmermann celebrated a scoop, for example, and the publication of the NSU files by the Hessian Office for the Protection of the Constitution also caused a stir.

Because of the entertaining character of the show, however, the staging of the research is imperative - and this leads to problems. Most recently in the attempt to dismantle the CSU politician Christian Schmidt, who has been in Bosnia since mid-2021 as "High Representative of the international community". Krsto Lazarević, employee of the Green MEP Erik Marquardt, had pointed out factual errors via Twitter and asked a central question: "How much can a format like the ZDF Magazin Royale actually omit and shorten?" Michael Martens, the Southeast Europe correspondent of the "FAZ ", judged: "Research with the sledgehammer".

There was also criticism of the program, which ultimately led to the dismissal of Arne Schönbohm as head of the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) because of alleged pro-Russian connections. At the time, the publicist Sascha Lobo wrote for the “Spiegel” why the “staging furor” went through with Böhmermann and his crew in this case. The list goes on.

Interesting a broad audience in socio-political issues is an achievement, but also a responsibility - which Böhmermann's program does not always do justice to. Journalism is generally becoming more of a staging than it used to be, and the “ZDF Magazin Royale” is taking this form of presentation to the extreme. The Grimme jury can award a prize for this – but they should have taken the opportunity to initiate a debate about the dark side of cross-border commuting. Because Jan Böhmermann already has enough unreflective fans.