The SWR reporter Natalie Akbari only wanted to do her job on Friday evening, to report live from the conference room of the CDU district party conference in Mannheim for the TV program “SWR Aktuell Baden-Württemberg”.
But suddenly Thomas Hornung, CDU man and former office manager of Nikolas Löbel, intervenes. He molested the reporter, called her switch from the hall “an impertinence” and “dubious”. Akbari tries to mediate, but finally has to break off the switch, visibly disturbed.
Hornung’s reason for the switching attack: “It was reported live and loudly at the very moment, of all times, when the provisional district chairman dealt with the allegations in her statement of accounts.” Therefore, the interview should not have been held at the same time and in the room, said Hornung on Saturday.
BRISANT: The meeting was about coming to terms with the case of Masken-Raffke Nikolas Löbel – one of the politicians who made their pockets with mask deals at the beginning of the year. Hornung was the office manager and a close employee of Löbel.
SWR reporter Akbari was switched again shortly after the mob incident – this time in front of the door of the meeting room. It was a “very uncomfortable situation” for her, she reports.
AND: Even after the interruption, she still had to listen to “rude insults”.
Outrage also from the moderator in the studio, she called the incident an “encroachment on our freedom of the press”.
The Baden-Württemberg SPD General Secretary Sascha Binder (38) asked the CDU to apologize to the reporter and the SWR.
It is unacceptable if a journalist is hindered in her work at a CDU event in the presence of the State Secretary General Isabell Huber. “We only knew that from AfD events so far,” said Binder.
Hornung himself showed little remorse. “I must have acted in an affect and shot beyond myself,” he said. But he doesn’t regret the procedure.
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