On Friday, the “Tagesschau” published an amazing report on its website: The ARD news program reported on an allegedly groundbreaking invention by Maxwell Chikumbutso, a man from Zimbabwe. He should have invented a television that generates electricity even when it is switched off.
However, the invention, which seemed so sensational, turned out to be a scam, and the news story was false. The “Tagesschau” has now also admitted this. Juliane Leopold, editor-in-chief of ARD-aktuell digital, wrote in the Tagesschau blog that the Africa correspondent who produced the article had asked for the piece to be taken offline again.
“I was taken in by the pseudo-scientific explanations of the protagonist of my contribution. The Zimbabwean’s research is not scientifically proven,” said the ARD correspondent. “It is likely that they will never be proven either, because they contradict physical principles.” In addition, the journalist apologizes for the false report. This affects her deeply in her “journalistic self-image”.
The original article in the “Tagesschau” initially said that scientists from the USA had tested the technology and confirmed its functionality. A little later, however, the author of the article had to admit on Twitter that she had not been in contact with these researchers from the United States. Apparently that hadn’t made the reporter suspicious.
Editor-in-chief Leopold expressed her regret at the false report: “We at tagesschau.de very much regret that we have published a ‘duck’ here. High quality standards for journalistic work are very important to us, and we assume that all correspondent reports that we publish, have been checked in advance according to all the basic journalistic rules. Now we are working together to further improve the processes.”
Sources: “Tagesschau” / Jana Genth on Twitter
Watch the video: moderator Wolfram Kons sneezes, weather moderator Maxi Biewer laughs or news moderator Peter Kloeppel, who is suddenly sitting in the dark studio. In 2021, the RTL live broadcasts experienced some funny bankruptcies, bad luck and breakdowns.
