Michael Lucan, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE, via Wikimedia Commons
A state-funded German left-wing publication that spread disinformation about right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has released another hit piece, this time targeting the leader of centre-right CDU, Friedrich Merz—one month before the national elections.
The “investigative journalism” website Correctiv attracted attention last year when it published an article designed to undermine public confidence in the AfD, which had been—and still is— surging in the polls due to its tough stance on migration.
The piece falsely accused party members of having discussed deporting German citizens from a migrant background at a conference in Potsdam in November 2023. Other media outlets, including state-run broadcasters, have been repeating these claims about the AfD ever since, despite court rulings that deemed them to be false.
Less than a month before the February 23rd elections, Correctiv is now going after Friedrich Merz, the leader of the CDU, which is the frontrunner in the polls.
The article, described by the publication as “explosive,” details the 69-year-old Merz’s ties to big corporations and suggests how these relationships could influence the way he runs the country. Correctiv accuses Merz of advocating a liberal economic policy instead of a left-wing one, and the publication expresses its fears that “right-wing conservative voices from the past are also getting involved again.”
As conservative news outlet Nius.de explains, absolutely nothing controversial or “explosive” is revealed in the article, because Friedrich Merz is well-known as a former politician-turned-businessman who went back into politics and took over the leadership of the CDU after Angela Merkel. Merz is vowing to steer the CDU back towards the Right after two decades of left-wing-liberal policies by his predecessor.
What is controversial, however, is the fact that Correctiv unashamedly takes public money from the government and uses it to attack the political opponents of the two governing parties, the Social Democrats and the Greens.
In 2023, the publication received €198,500 from the Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media, Green politician Claudia Roth. Last year, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research granted €1.33 million to Correctiv for a ‘fact checker’ project to combat ‘fake news’—a clearly ironic move, given the publication’s history of spreading… fake news.
In 2022 and 2023, the outlet also received over half a million euros from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, led by a politician from CDU’s left wing, Hendrik Wüst.
As German lawyer Ulrich Vosgerau told europeanconservative.com in an interview last year:
The German state supports Correctiv financially, putting money in the pockets of these fairytale-tellers. They publish outrageous narratives, false facts, and cascades of speculation with the intention that these are taken as facts, “research,” and “revelations.”
The platform has proudly stated that it works “free of political and economic dependencies,” but its funding and left-wing activism suggest that it is extremely biased and under the influence of the governing parties.
As Nius.de writes, “tough investigative research against Green Minister Robert Habeck would be almost unimaginable,” not to mention that their former managing director Jeannette Gusko has been managing the Greens’ election campaign since November.
As we previously reported, Correctiv’s directors had meetings with officials from the federal government on numerous occasions, apparently to “exchange ideas” on what coverage is desirable, and Gusko met Chancellor Olaf Scholz days before the now infamous Potsdam meeting, on which the publication had deceptively misreported about.