An internal memo shows: While public broadcaster WDR pretends to at least want to “carefully consider” working with an avowed anti-Semite, it has long since been decided internally to work with the controversial “colleague” Nemi El-Hassan in future, despite all the serious accusations, and thus to fulfil a “duty of care”. And: WDR does not take anti-Semitism seriously and plays it down to a mere “cultural conflict” which is to be accepted in favour of a necessary “diversity”. Possibly a programme of its own is intended to justify the WDR employee’s hatred of Jews.
Tom Buhrow, the head of WDR, spoke of a possible consideration to have Nemi El-Hassan work as an author for the programme “Quarks” instead of as a presenter.
But the magazine Tichys Einblick (TE) is now in possession of an in-house correspondence that completely calls this into question. It all seems as if WDR had long since decided to work with Nemi El-Hassan despite all the serious accusations – and: as if WDR does not take anti-Semitism seriously!
The letter that TE possesses was published on October 8, 2021 by the WDR programme director and broadcast journalist Valerie Weber and sent to all employees of the directorate as an email.
So in reality, WDR just wants to wait until the debate about Nemi El-Hassan is no longer “politicised in such a way” – is it not a matter of “careful consideration” at all, as the Broadcasting House pretends in its press release? Do serious accusations of anti-Semitism only represent politicisation for WDR? Not one word mentions the word ‘anti-Semitism’. Instead, WDR has been in a ‘direct exchange’ ‘behind the scenes’ with Nemi El-Hassan the entire time.The accusations of anti-Semitism against El-Hassan thus seem to be only superficially relevant to WDR.
An employee of the broadcasting house, whose position and place of work is known to TE, revealed to TE that there is an “extreme diversity policy” in broadcasting. The broadcasting houses would not do this because they are such good people themselves. Instead, this is “pure calculation”, according to the public broadcasting employee, who also knows the internal affairs of WDR: “From a demographic perspective, young Muslims are the most important target group. All the others are numerically irrelevant anyway. This target group determines the medium to long-term planning.” The long-time employee explains that for many years he had thought that “in order to bind this target group, one negligently ignores the deeply rooted anti-Semitism there”, but “in the meantime there are increasing signs that one rather deliberately accepts it”. This can be clearly deduced from internal discussions and strategies, it is “in fact no secret” in broadcasting.
The employee also reveals that legally there is no “duty of care” towards Nemi El-Hassan on the part of the broadcaster, as it is claimed in the letter. Because El-Hassan “is – or would be – a freelancer”, which she would also have been as a presenter, according to the WDR employee. Rather, the treatment of Nemi El-Hassan was a deliberate procedure “to send a signal to the most important target group: We are on your side, unconditionally.” The long-time broadcasting employee considers this approach threatening and says that it is openly shown and communicated internally – as the letter also proves.
https://www.tichyseinblick.de/daili-es-sentials/interner-brief-wdr-zusammenarbeit-el-hassan/