Franca Lehfeldt is a journalist with an impressive reputation: trained at the RTL School of Journalism, chief reporter at RTL Politik-Magazine, chief reporter at the television station “Welt”, author of “Old wise men: Homage to an endangered species” and she is also the wife of … No, that doesn’t matter, so we’ll leave it at this point.
As the chief reporter for politics, Franca Lehfeldt moderated the show “Welt” last Saturday and made the most embarrassing mistake possible. On Holocaust Remembrance Day, she announced: “78 years ago today, the Red Army Faction liberated the survivors of the German concentration and extermination camp at Auschwitz.”
If the topic weren’t so serious, probably no one would have been interested. However, the topic is serious, which is why a video of the “slip” spread rapidly on the Internet and was classified with thematically inappropriate mockery.
Franca Lehfeldt then felt compelled to publish a picture with a statement on Instagram. Grinning like a honey cake horse, she announced: “I made a promise to a moderator. That shouldn’t happen in live situations, but unfortunately it is.” She reminded the scoffing internet community, “People make mistakes.”
Lehfeldt accuses sexism
So far so good. Lehfeldt has promised himself and is a human being. But that’s not all, Lehfeldt criticized that her slip of the tongue was followed by “a disproportionate wave of malice and, above all, sexism”. She therefore asks “what goes on in the minds of those who participate in it.” That is an interesting question, but not that easy to answer, also because it is not clear what she is actually talking about.
A spokeswoman for Die Welt answered a question about what she meant by sexism as follows: “The majority of tweets and posts in social networks have not addressed Ms Lehfeldt’s slip of the tongue in the criticism, but rather her marriage in a mostly disrespectful way. ”
The press secretary is right. After an extensive analysis of the malicious comments, the impression could arise that it is mainly about the fact that Franca Lehfeldt is the wife of – please excuse me, but at this point the reference can no longer be avoided – Christian Linder and is reduced to it.
We can’t blame her. The subject of “the marriage of a renowned journalist to a popular finance minister” is also really annoying us. It would be much more exciting to read that someone apologizes for a mistake – and then learns from it.