Fake news in the election campaign: SPD takes legal action against online media

The SPD is now also taking legal action against the online medium “Focus Online”. SPD General Secretary Matthias Miersch said this star. “We were forced to take legal action after discussions with the editorial team.” Miersch also offers the other parties a “fairness agreement” in the election campaign.

“Focus Online” had previously published an article on Saturday evening about an allegedly planned smear campaign by the SPD against the Union Chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz. The SPD is said to have planned for 100 women to explain in videos why they were afraid of Merz as Chancellor. According to its own information, the online medium relied on information from “insiders from the Union”. The text was completely deleted after a few hours without comment.

Among other things, the head of the SPD election campaign agency, Raphael Brinkert, had previously sharply denied the allegations and the report. It was only on Monday that “Focus Online” published a brief statement: Sources considered reliable by the editorial team had reported on a targeted campaign. However, the parties’ reactions and further research led to a new assessment. “We no longer assume that there were strategic considerations by the SPD in the way we originally described.”

SPD General Secretary Matthias Miersch criticizes this reaction: “Focus Online fails to mention that the editorial team only gave in after we called in the media lawyer Christian Schertz due to the initial suspicion of defamation.” He describes the article as “disinformation, hatred and incitement.” It is based on untested claims from alleged CDU insiders – the SPD would not have been confronted with the allegations. “This has no journalistic basis,” said Miersch.

The basic rule in journalism is that those affected must be confronted before allegations are made publicly against them. It is also common to allow a deadline for answers. At the same time, it is common for information to refer to more than one source in order to secure it. Since then, employees, party members and sympathizers of the SPD and CDU have been showering each other with hatred, mutual accusations and conspiracy theories on social media.

SPD General Secretary Matthias Miersch is now offering all democratic parties a “fairness agreement”. This includes checking sources, not using false reporting as a basis for election campaigns and agreeing on a common approach to AI content and deep fakes. The parties had already agreed on a similar code before the European elections in June.

After the allegations were published in the “Focus online” article, he assured CDU General Secretary Carsten Linnemann that they were lies. Miersch emphasizes: “It is important that Democrats argue hard on the issue, but remain fair in their dealings.” Miersch said he was grateful that his CDU counterpart shared this view.