As Spiegel reports, a passage from Dieter Nuhr’s show ‘Nuhr im Ersten’ caused outrage. The comedian had joked in a monologue about violence against women and shifted responsibility to potential victims: ‘To be safe, it wouldn’t be bad if you simply got to know your partner before sex,’ Nuhr said. Critics accused him of victim-blaming.
Nuhr responded to these lines on Facebook. ‘No joke about femicides, nowhere. I have never done that. I will not do it,’ he wrote. Instead, he claimed to have been misunderstood. He said he was referring to the word ‘structural,’ which assigns guilt to all men. According to his own account, his jokes referenced articles in major German newspapers in which women questioned whether they could still live with men because they ‘statistically kill.’ He emphasized that every murder of a woman is one too many, but the chance of encountering a murderer when choosing a partner is vanishingly small.
The RBB, which broadcasts the show, called the criticism of Nuhr’s passage understandable. However, in satire formats, artistic freedom must also be respected. ‘Dieter Nuhr, as an artist, may fundamentally formulate provocatively and pointedly against the backdrop of artistic freedom,’ the broadcaster said. While taste boundaries are debatable, the RBB does not see its programming mandate violated given the broad scope of satire freedom.
Source: www.spiegel.de
