Complaint about a programme to the NDR

On 7 June 2025, the Tagesschau news programme broad­cast the claim that the EU was paying envir­on­mental activ­ists to run polit­ical campaigns. We at KLIMA° vor acht believe that the edit­orial team has thereby grossly breached its duty of journ­al­istic dili­gence and uncrit­ic­ally repro­duced a piece of disin­form­a­tion that had already been debunked, which contra­venes key programme prin­ciples. For this reason, on 20 June, our asso­ci­ation submitted the formal programme complaint repro­duced below to the NDR Broad­casting Council.

Complaint about a programme: the report ‘Campaigns for climate policy: EU funds for envir­on­mental activ­ists?’ dated 7 June 2025, published on tagesschau.de and on ARD’s TV, radio and social media chan­nels

Dear Sir or Madam,

It was with great dismay that we noted the report on the ‘Tagesschau’ programme on 7 June 2025 entitled ‘EU funds for envir­on­mental activ­ists?’. The report, which is based on an invest­ig­a­tion by *Welt am Sonntag*, was appar­ently adopted and broad­cast by the edit­orial team without the requisite journ­al­istic dili­gence. It blatantly disreg­ards key programme prin­ciples and journ­al­istic stand­ards.

We hereby lodge a formal complaint regarding the programme. The item breaches the program­ming prin­ciples set out in Section 8 of the State Treaty on Nord­deutscher Rund­funk (NDR State Treaty). In partic­ular, it contra­venes para­graph 2, which states: “News coverage and current affairs programmes must comply with recog­nised journ­al­istic prin­ciples […]. They must be inde­pendent and objective. Before being broad­cast, news items must be checked for accuracy and source with the due care required by the circum­stances.”

Regarding the specific criti­cisms:

(1) A flag­rant breach of the duty of care in journ­alism

The most serious alleg­a­tion is the edit­orial team’s failure to cross-check the claims made by *Welt am Sonntag* against facts that were already publicly known and access­ible. As early as February 2025 – that is, four months before the *Tagesschau*’s report – the media outlet *Politico* had analysed the relevant contracts between the European Commis­sion and NGOs and concluded that there was no evid­ence what­so­ever of any covert, earmarked commis­sioning of lobbying campaigns or legal actions. The facts, which essen­tially refuted the *Welt*’s alleg­a­tions, had there­fore been known for some time and could have been uncovered through simple research. In this instance, the Tagesschau failed to fulfil its funda­mental duty to verify and contex­tu­alise the inform­a­tion and, instead, uncrit­ic­ally propag­ated false inform­a­tion that had already been refuted. This consti­tutes a flag­rant breach of the duty of care enshrined in Section 8 of the NDR State Treaty.

(2) Lack of balance and delayed correc­tion

Neither the European Commis­sion nor the NGOs in ques­tion were given the oppor­tunity to comment on the alleg­a­tions. Instead, the original report quotes exclus­ively from the “Welt” article. Among other things, this contra­venes the NDR programme guidelines, which stip­u­late that factual claims must be veri­fied in news programmes and broad­casts. Section 3(b) states: “If a crit­ic­ally analyt­ical programme is to include factual claims directed against a person or insti­tu­tion, it is part of the programme’s careful prepar­a­tion to hear the views of those concerned, insofar as this is neces­sary and possible, and not to disregard their views.” The edit­orial team’s approach following the initial public­a­tion exacer­bates the breach. Without indic­ating the changes (through a trans­par­ency notice or similar), further perspect­ives were gradu­ally added to the report hours after public­a­tion, such as a state­ment from Lobby­con­trol (1.28 pm) or a state­ment from the European Commis­sion itself, which rejects the alleg­a­tions (5.54 pm). In the mean­time, the original, one-sided and misleading account had been shared millions of times. This approach disreg­ards the prin­ciples of balance and objectivity and has contrib­uted to a massive wave of disin­form­a­tion.

(3) Persistent misin­form­a­tion on social media

The spread of this inform­a­tion via social media chan­nels such as Instagram is partic­u­larly serious. Whilst the text captions were amended hours later, the original, false claims remain perman­ently visible in the non-edit­able image slides and continue to be shared. Tagesschau has thus know­ingly produced misin­form­a­tion, the correc­tion of which has only reached its target audi­ence to an insuf­fi­cient extent. The damage to the NGOs concerned and to trust in the EU insti­tu­tions had long since been done by that point and is perpetu­ated by the continued pres­ence of the content online.

We urge you to comment on this matter without delay and request a separate reply to the complaint we have raised.

Kind regards

Friederike Mayer, Chair­person • Daniel Kulms, Member of the Exec­utive Board

Sources for reporting

• Online article: https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/europa/eu-kommission-bezahlung-umweltverbaende-100.html
• Instagram post 1: https://www.instagram.com/p/DKl96_xssyq/
• Instagram post 2: https://www.instagram.com/p/DKmZ6kWoQwr/