German public broadcaster NDR engaged conservative journalist Julia Ruhs as a television host earlier this year, largely to counter criticism that its current affairs coverage was too heavy on liberal-leftist perspectives.
News of her departure after just three pilot shows, however, has revived a culture war over public broadcasting – in particular at the northern German outlet NDR.
The timing of the news couldn’t have been worse either. Long-time conservative critics have accused journalists at NDR – and the wider ARD group – of hypocrisy for cheering Ruhs’s departure while criticising ABC’s suspension of US talkshow host Jimmy Kimmel over controversial remarks about right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
“Why talk about Jimmy Kimmel and cancelling when we can look instead to NDR,” said Harald Schmidt, former host of Germany’s longest-running late-night show. “NDR is where the editorial offices clean up after themselves.”
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The Ruhs standoff has transformed the little-known 31-year-old into a poster girl for Germany’s ascendant right-of-centre camp.
In her five-year journalism career she has built a profile as a conservative voice and has just published a book arguing that dominant left-Green narratives are “dividing our country”.
The current controversy began building after she hosted her first show – Klar – last April, casting a critical gaze over Germany’s decade-old wave of migration.
A key pillar of the programme was an interview with the father of a young woman fatally stabbed – along with her boyfriend – on a regional train in 2023.
The perpetrator: a stateless Palestinian asylum seeker from Gaza with a history of violent crime, addiction issues and psychological problems.
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Six days before the attack, he had been released from remand because of a delay in another court hearing – for another violent attack.
“No family is interested if the perpetrator is traumatised, psychologically ill or whatever,” said Michael Kyrath to the Klar show. “Their loved ones are gone and we should stop looking for excuses.”
The programme revived a long-running dispute in Germany: whether non-German nationals and asylum seekers are more likely to commit knife crime, as Klar suggested, or whether the key factor is the higher prevalence of psychological problems among migrants and asylum seekers fleeing war zones.
Two further programmes followed: about whether Germany’s Covid policies divided the country and the challenges facing German farmers.
Ruhs criticised the decision to let her go as “completely incomprehensible”, saying her team’s work had attracted back lost conservative voters to public television.
“My team, and I personally, received an incredible amount of support from people who had lost trust in public broadcasting and its diversity of opinion,” she said.
On a podcast, she accused NDR of “criminalising opinions that are centre or centre-right and a long way from extremist or radical positions”.
Daniel Günther, the conservative state premier of Schleswig-Holstein – part of the NDR broadcast region – agreed that the decision sent an “extremely bad signal” and boycotted a broadcaster event.
The Ruhs affair was triggered when 250 NDR staff members signed an open letter criticising her three Klar shows for a “lack of balance” and “too much emotionalisation”, including suggestive background music.
“We distance ourselves from this production and request an examination of the decisions that led to this programme being aired in this way,” the letter added.
On another public network, a talkshow host accused Ruhs and the Klar team of manipulating a grieving father.
As the scandal gathers steam, right-wing media outlets have hit back. The conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine daily called the scandal a further nail in the coffin of German public television and journalists who “claim to be tolerant ... but swarm out against those who think differently without inhibition and full of arrogance and aggression”.
