In Germany, feminists and artists win their case against a journalist approached to present a major cultural program

German public television had to backpedal after entrusting the presentation of a cultural program to journalist Thilo Mischke. A hundred authors and artists recalled his misogynistic remarks.

En Germany, the historic cultural magazine of the first public television channel is starting the year with a storm. Broadcast since 1967, the program “ttt – titel, thesen, temperamente”, which focuses on cinema, music, literature and more generally art and ideas, was due to change its face in mid-February. Shortly before Christmas, the German public group ARD announced the arrival of journalist and author Thilo Mischke, alongside presenter Siham El-Maimouni. The newcomer was also to launch the program’s podcast. Awarded in 2020 for his work on the Germans joining the Islamic State, then in 2023 for his reporting on the return of the Taliban to Afghanistan, this forty-year-old is known for his field show Uncoveredbroadcast on the private channel ProSieben.

The storm was not born from his reporting, but from his books. Shortly after the announcement of her nomination, the podcast “Feminist Shelf Control” recalled the misogynistic content of her work published in 2010, entitled Around the world in 80 womenin which the author bets his friends that he can sleep with eighty women during his travels around the globe. “In his books, he expresses himself in a sexist, misogynistic, racist, ableist and homophobic manner”affirm the authors of the podcast who dissect, over several years, the speeches of Thilo Mischke. They cite in particular comments made by the journalist in 2019, in his own podcast. The journalist then estimated that’Homo Sapiens had survived through rape, unlike its prehistoric cousins.

“The central question is whether a man who, in 2024, seems to believe that sexual violence is in the nature of men […] is the most suitable candidate to moderate one of the most important German cultural magazines »asked feminist podcaster Rebekka Endler. Widely reported in the German media, these criticisms did not, initially, move the public audiovisual group. The ARD stressed that the journalist had distanced himself from his book published in 2010.

This was without taking into account the mobilization of the German artistic world. More than a hundred authors and cultural professionals, “dismayed by this decision”sent a letter to the leaders of public television, published in full on January 2, by the daily Daily Mirror. They write: “For cultural television, we want presenters who are enthusiastic and interested in culture, sensitive and empathetic, capable of responding to contemporary discourses and doing justice to the complexity of current cultural debates. We therefore exclude a collaboration with Thilo Mischke as presenter of the cultural program ttt – title, theses, temperament. Among the signatories, the writers Saša Stanišić and Alena Schröder. Their pressure ended up convincing. In a press release published on the afternoon of Saturday January 4, the ARD explains that it has decided not to hire Thilo Mischke to present the show: “lively discussions […] that have arisen in recent days have overshadowed the topics that ARD wants to convey with the program and the brand ttt. The program director specifies that the subject will be covered journalistically soon, in consultation with Thilo Mischke. As for the show tttshe will be presented, solo, by Siham El-Maimouni.