hard but fair

Television broadcast
Original title	hard but fair
Country of production	Germany
Year (s)	since 2001
Production company	Announcer & Schnipselmann
length	75 minutes
Broadcasting cycle	weekly (Mondays 9:00 p.m.)
genre	political talk show
production	Jürgen Schulte (A&S)
Moderation	Frank Plasberg (since 2001) Susan Link (2020)
First broadcast	January 31, 2001 on WDR television

Moderator Frank Plasberg

tough but fair is a weekly political talk show . In the 75-minute program that will be broadcast on Monday evening on Das Erste , presenter Frank Plasberg discusses a current, controversial topic with his guests. The viewers receive additional information through short films and can participate directly. Before switching to the main program of ARD, the show ran for seven years on WDR television .

concept

The name goes back to the language of football comments since the post-war period. As the name suggests, the discussion should be open and controversial. Instead of ideological and party-political statements, factual arguments should be in the foreground. Therefore, in addition to politicians, scientific experts, representatives of other organizations and directly involved or affected persons are among the participants in the discussion. The guests are selected in such a way that different positions are represented. The editors research information on the topic of the respective program in order to provide additional arguments and to make the background more understandable for viewers.

Shipment process

At the beginning of the program, the moderator Frank Plasberg names the topic to be discussed, which is formulated as a question with a slogan. Then the five guests are introduced individually, with an off-voice giving their name and function and classifying the person with a quote. The guests are usually placed at the table in such a way that the representatives of the most extreme pro and con arguments sit on the outside. In the course of the discussions that are now beginning, Plasberg intervenes with films when the opportunity arises. In the short contributions, viewers receive additional information through statistics, interviews or newspaper reports. Sometimes one of the guests is addressed directly in a post and confronted with his earlier, controversial statements.

In addition to the guests at the table, there is usually a one-on-one conversation with someone who deals with the topic in a special way. During the second half of the program, Plasberg speaks to his colleague Brigitte Büscher , who presents a selection of audience reactions. Before and during the broadcast, TV viewers have the opportunity to comment on the topic by phone, email , Facebook or in the guest book on the website. In the final round with the guests at the table, an imaginative question is used to determine who convinced whom. On Tuesday lunchtime, the editors publish the so-called fact check on the Internet , in which some controversial statements or figures given by the guests are checked.

Production and broadcast

Group photo of the broadcast on February 20, 2017 with Hannelore Kraft , Christoph Butterwegge , Hajo Schumacher , Frank Plasberg , Herbert Reul and Christian Lindner

The program is broadcast live either from Cologne or Berlin . In Cologne the production takes place in Studio A at the law school of the WDR. The Berlin location, which was chosen because of its proximity to the federal government, is in the studios of Studio Berlin Adlershof GmbH in Adlershof. Before October 21, 2009, the Globe City Studio was in use in the capital . The Monday live broadcast usually starts at 9:00 p.m. The first repetitions of the current issue can be seen the following night at 3:10 a.m. and on Tuesday morning at 8:45 a.m. on Das Erste, on 3sat on the same day at 10:15 a.m. In addition, the digital ARD program tagesschau24 shows the program on Tuesdays at 8:15 p.m.

From the premiere on January 31, 2001 to October 10, 2007, hart but fair was broadcast on Wednesdays at 8:15 pm as a 90-minute format on WDR television. The current broadcast is shown on the Internet as a live stream in the ARD media library. There you can also see past editions of the program, which are also included on the hart but fair website, where, in addition to the player, further information about the programs and the guests is available.

reception

Statements by the Hessian Prime Minister Roland Koch on juvenile delinquency caused unrest among Turkish migrants in January 2008.

In October 2009, the editorial team was accused of inadequate research when journalist Klaus Martens presented a controversial drug against neurodermatitis . The WDR Broadcasting Council then condemned Martens' documentary , but dismissed the program complaint against hard but fair . The appearance of Thilo Sarrazin, who was criticized for his statements about migrants, also attracted a lot of attention in September 2010.

A broadcast on the topic of hardware stores on April 23, 2012 aroused considerable resentment among viewers, who saw it as a flattening of the talk show's otherwise demanding political topic culture. Also in other media and in the feature pages of the show under the title Knowledge, where the hammer hangs - what drives Germans to the hardware store? to criticism and some irony. Various voices brought the topic, which many regular viewers considered peculiar to the audience, to quota problems in the talk format. In fact, the DIY store episode had its lowest rate since the transmission time changed from Wednesday to Monday.

The broadcast of March 2, 2015 Down with the Ampelmännchen - Germany in an equality mania? was subsequently deleted from the WDR media library and the ARD portal following a recommendation by the Broadcasting Council after program complaints and protests . According to a statement by the chairman of the WDR Broadcasting Council, Ruth Hieronymi , the selection of the talk guests ( Wolfgang Kubicki , Anton Hofreiter , Birgit Kelle , Anne Wizorek and Sophia Thomalla ) and the discussion leaders were not up to the seriousness of the issue of gender . Among other things, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung accused the WDR of censorship. The television director of the WDR, Jörg Schönenborn , rejected this "decidedly", since such a rebuke was too "serious" to be used lightly. At the end of August, the program was added to the media library again. Jörg Schönenborn commented that even the appearance of a lack of independence, which arose from the inadequate accusations of self-censorship and censorship, impaired the work of the WDR. In his opinion, the violent reactions showed that the decision to delete the post was not the right one. On September 7, 2015, the criticism of the previous program and the gender debate were addressed in another edition of the talk show. In addition to the guests on March 3rd, Jörg Schönenborn and the Greens politician Sybille Mattfeldt-Kloth, who, as chairwoman of the Lower Saxony women's council , had submitted a program complaint, took part.

On May 22, 2018, hard but fair was thematized in the cabaret show Die Anstalt as “hard but empty with Frank Blasbalg”. Was criticized u. a. that privately produced talk shows like hart but fair are significantly more expensive than in-house productions like Maybrit Illner .

Awards

• 2003: German television award in the category of best information broadcast
• 2005: Hanns Joachim Friedrichs Prize for TV Journalism
• 2005: Adolf Grimme Prize in the Information & Culture category
• 2005: Ernst-Schneider IHK media award for the broadcast company reorganized - employees ruined from October 20, 2004
• 2006: Bavarian TV Prize to Frank Plasberg for his moderation
• 2019: The Golden Potato for your program content

Trivia

Susan Link as moderator on February 3, 2020

• The song, which originally ran almost always in the background during the short films, is called Cups and comes from the British electronics duo Underworld . In the meantime, however, an in-house production based on this is being played.
• In 2009 the show was included in the storyline of the television series The Little Man . The relationship between East and West Germany was used as the theme . The show Hart aber Fair also appears in the successful feature film He's back .
• In January and February 2020 Susan Link will represent the sick Plasberg for the first time as a moderator.

Incidents

On December 16, 2019, a feminist disrupted the program by stepping out of the audience area in the middle of the ongoing discussion on animal welfare and remarking that she wanted to make a demand in the room: The Federal Intelligence Service of the Federal Government should stop, To practice anti-feminism on the internet. After a brief argument with a talk guest, Plasberg had his editor-in-chief escort her out of the studio. The WDR admitted the following day that a gap in the program's security concept was responsible for the incident.

literature

• Tobias Könning: It's all just chatter !? Discourse potential of the political talk show 'Hart aber fair'. VDM, Saarbrücken 2009, ISBN 978-3-639-12639-6 .

Web links

Commons : tough but fair  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• hard but fair on the WDR website.
• Stefan Winterbauer: Frank Plasberg's formula for success . Meedia.de, August 26, 2010.
• Tough but fair in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Hard but fair in the Das Erste: Mediathek
• Hard but fair as a podcast ( RSS )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Journal for English and American Studies . VEB Verlag Enzyklopädie, Berlin (East) 1954, p. 307 .
2. ↑ Helmut Ziegler: The female vein . In: Berliner Zeitung , September 21, 2007.
3. ↑ Roland Koch rows back. (No longer available online.) In: Rheinische Post. January 11, 2008, formerly in the original ; Retrieved November 24, 2010 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.    
4. ↑ Marcus Bäcker: Wasn't it even briefed? In: Berliner Zeitung , January 11, 2008.
5. ↑ Stefan Schmitt: Internet denounces too uncritical WDR report . In: Die Zeit , No. 45/2009.
6. ↑ WDR-Rundfunkrat: WDR-Rundfunkrat decides on program complaints against “cure undesirable” and “hard but fair”. In: wdr.de. May 20, 2010, archived from the original on May 21, 2010 ; Retrieved November 24, 2010 . 
7. ↑ Niels Kruse: Darned and pointed. In: Stern. September 2, 2010, accessed November 24, 2010 . 
8. ↑ Peer Schader: "Hard but fair" - screw loose. In: FAZ.NET , April 24, 2012. Retrieved April 28, 2012.
9. ↑ Uwe Mantel: Weakest audience so far. Plasberg's DIY store talk flops. In: DWDL.de, April 24, 2012.
10. ↑ Sophia Thomalla outraged by the WDR deletion campaign - “Who decides what is dubious?” In: Tagesspiegel -online, 23 August 2015, accessed on 23 August 2015.
11. ↑ "Hard but fair" with a gender issue back in the media library . In: Tagesspiegel -online, August 31, 2015, accessed on September 5, 2015.
12. ↑ Michael Hanfeld: "Is the WDR a washcloth association?" In: FAZ-Feuilleton , September 5, 2015, accessed on September 6, 2015.
13. ^ The institution of May 22, 2018: Political satire with Max Uthoff and Claus von Wagner. In: ZDF.de. Retrieved May 28, 2018 . 
14. ↑ German Television Prize - Prize Winner 2003
15. ↑ Hanns-Joachim-Friedrichs-Preis - press release 2005 ( Memento of the original of August 12, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
16. ↑ Grimme Prize - Laureate 2005 ( Memento of the original from April 12, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
17. ↑ Ernst-Schneider IHK Media Prize - Press Release 2005 ( Memento of the original from October 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 69 kB) 
18. ↑ Bavarian TV Prize - Laureates 1989–2010 ( Memento of the original from April 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 109 kB) 
19. ↑ Golden Potato Award Ceremony 2019. Neue Deutsche Medienmacher , November 2, 2019, accessed on April 23, 2020 . 
20. ↑ last.fm Tough but fair
21. ↑ youtube: Underworld - Cups - Full Length
22. ↑ Short review: The little man . xTown.net