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According to recent news of t-online / Spiegel online, the German Federal President, Christian Wulff (52), doesn't object the publication of his mailbox flak ('declaration of war') against Bild's chief-deskman, Kai Dieckmann. This is a new development, indeed, in the 'presidential private home loan affair' about 500.000 euros from the wife of Wulff's long-term friend Egon Geerkens. Wulff's lawyer, Gernot Lehr, told media that the Federal President is not afraid of Bild's publishing although the responsibility of this issue rests with the tabloid.
OK, this is quite comprehensible maneuvering. If you got corned you would attack, huh? But was this really necessary?
Why this kind of covering up? Promising transparency - but all what we got was quite presidential 'glasnost' through milky glass, or 'milk-glasnost', so to say.
We got the truth(?) slice by slice, and not the revelation, we expected when Wulff made his public apology and statements on German public TV in a joint broadcast of ARD and ZDF lately.
Wulff enraged verbal flak didn't target the chief-deskman alone. Another phone call had been made - on the mailbox of 'Springer-Chief' Mathias Döpfner, similar 'threats' (?) or just relieving rage on the 'breaking story' that was not postponed by Bild until Wulff's return from the Middle East journey as the president allegedly requested.
Well, this doesn't really matter much.
The attack on the freedom of the press is scandalous enough. Preaching democracy and the high standards of modern western societies as role models and blue prints for 'Arab revolution spring states' is not that trustworthy if a high office holder is stone-walling on an alleged private affair that has really showed some questionable aspects in the course of the development.
OK, you may also say that a private loan is none of Bild's business. Having told a state parliamentary investigative commission that you didn't have a business relationship to a long-term buddy albeit having received a half a million euro loan from the buddy's wife was quite worth of story, huh?
The German media have been closing ranks with Bild in this respect, the highest constitutional tenet on freedom of the press has been at stake here.
And, Germany is not governed by a gray eminence, like Russia with Putin, who may silence the media, huh?
