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Top Journalist Admits On Air That News Agenda Is Set By Government

A retired broadcaster who ran one of Germany’s major television networks has gone on-air and admitted that his network and others take orders from the government on what they can and can’t report.  Breitbart.com reports: National public service broadcaster Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF), which was recently forced into a humiliating apology for their silence on migrant violence and sex assault is being drawn into a fresh scandal after one of their former bureau chiefs admitted the company takes orders from the government on what it reports. He said journalists received instructions to write news that would be “to Ms. Merkel’s liking”. Former head of ZDF Bonn Dr. Wolfgang Herles make the remarks during a radio event (from minute 27) in Berlin where journalists discussed the media landscape. Moving on to the freedom of the press, the panel chair asked Dr. Herles whether things in Germany had got “seriously out of whack”. With an honesty perhaps unusual in Germany, Dr. Herles replied that ordinary Germans were totally losing faith in the media, something he called a “scandal”. He said: “We have the problem that – now I’m mainly talking about the public [state] media – we have a closeness to the government. Not only [...]