There is no shortage of critical voices accusing Florian Warweg of pro-Kremlin reporting. The Magdeburg native’s biographical positions include many years of work at the propaganda channel RT Deutsch (formerly Russia Today) and a role as a correspondent at the conspiracy blog “Nachdenkseiten”which repeatedly puts Russian war crimes into perspective.
Now Warweg is supposed to be available soon East German General Newspaper (OAZ) take over federal political reporting – the new media project by Holger Friedrich, owner of the Berliner Zeitungwho also seems to have a barely contained fascination with autocrats like Putin.
Friedrich called him personally, wrote Warweg in the “Nachdenkseiten” in January, “the Ossi in me immediately burned for this daring and demanding project.” Nevertheless, he was torn back and forth for weeks: “In the end, the ‘adventurer’ (and young pioneer) in me won.”
A few days later, the “Nachdenkseiten” published readers’ mail about Warweg’s departure, full of eulogies throughout. Two Warweg supporters from the West expressed the expectation that the reporter would continue to show “inexhaustible energy and the unbridled will” to “send a clear signal against the established propagandists in the West German media.”
Linked on the homepage is the invitation to the last “Reflection Pages” discussion group with Warweg. It says that Warweg acts at the federal press conference “not as a neutral chronicler, but as an advocate who asks questions.” He is a “truth disruptor” and unmasks the “military-industrial complex.”
They are complaining
He is now apparently supposed to be taking on his role in the federal press conference on behalf of the OAZ continue. Although he is not a member there, he has fought for participation and the right to ask questions in court. Colleagues in the Association of Berlin Parliamentary Reporters tell the taz that they perceive Warweg more as a troublemaker than as a professional questioner. Some hope that if Warweg continues like this, he could be excluded for behavior that is harmful to the club.
Both Holger Friedrich’s Berlin publishing house and the for the OAZ newly founded East German publishing house are increasingly being viewed critically because of their positions on Russia. The commitment of Florian Warweg is just an additional indication of this journalistic closeness. The Ostdeutsche Verlag probably sees it differently: Warweg’s previous journalistic work has been “consistently flawless,” he explains in an article on the website.
OAZ-Editor-in-chief Dorian Baganz claims in the Berliner Zeitung that a “West German-dominated media landscape” does not address “the negative consequences of rearmament and aid to Ukraine” loudly enough. “At the OAZ We will report without this bias.” In connection with the use of Warweg, he writes that this type of reporting “could quickly earn us the accusation that we are a ‘Russian newspaper’”.
But Baganz could give the all-clear – “Mr Putin hasn’t contacted me yet”. As if the Russian president himself had to oil the Kremlin’s propaganda machine.