Title Theses Sexism: Why Thilo Mischke shouldn’t moderate TTT

M Sometimes you have to ask the big questions: What world do we live in today, after seven years of #meToo, after the verdict in the case of Gisèle Pelicot, who was raped by dozens of men for decades? Shortly after a network of rapists was exposed on Telegram? Have we become more attentive? Do we have to live with the fear that it is potentially dangerous for women everywhere? What should public dealing with sexism look like today? The public broadcasters are also wrestling with these questions and actually wanted to become more diverse.

In a current case, ARD has once again taken a step in the wrong direction. The ÖRR’s most important cultural program, “Titles, Theses, Temperaments”, will have a new presenter from January 2025: the journalist Thilo Mischke. This has been causing discussion since it was announced on Thursday by ARD.

Rightly so, because he has not yet distanced himself from previous sexist, racist and ableist statements. Mischke wrote a book “Around the World in 80 Women” around 2010. This is based on the sexist bet with his friends: he travels around the world and has to get 80 women. Women and sex also seem to be his favorite topic, for those Gentlemen’s Quarterly he also had a column about it.

His thoughts on such topics are often sexist. Even to the very strange idea about evolutionary biological processes: In his own podcast “Uncovered” in 2019, he explains to the journalist Caroline Rosales that Homo sapiens survived because he raped women, in contrast to prehistoric humans. The journalists Annika Brockschmidt and Rebekka Endler have the timeline of Mischke’s statements in recent years in their podcast “Feminist Shelf Control” on Monday published in a detailed research.

A clear position against sexism is required

In it, Isabella Caldart and Anja Rützel, together with 16 other people, go through statements in his books, podcasts and talk shows from the last few years, piece by piece, and find “a bunch of unsavory stuff”. Mischke would make “sexist, misogynistic, racist, ableist and also homophobic comments”.

According to the podcast authors, TTT states that Mischke has reformed and now regrets his earlier publications. The editorial team did not respond to a query from the taz by the time of going to press. In fact, Mischke did not apologize for the content. In 2019, he invited the journalist Nadine Primo to talk about his book under the question “Can sexism be forgiven?” Mischke says he finds the title of the book terrible today, but he had a lot of fun researching it. He’s still behind that. That doesn’t sound like purification.

Yes, sexism could be forgiven, but only if you really publicly own up to your mistakes. And a real culture of error wouldn’t stop with Mischke himself. It would involve the broadcaster rethinking the appointment of Mischke as the new presenter and also the signaling effect of this. At least here there may still be some hope left, because we remember: It is entirely possible for the ÖRR to remove people from public life because of (supposedly) problematic statements or because of problematic behavior.

This only happened in 2024 with Sebastian Hotz at rbb because the station didn’t like his tweets about the assassination attempt on Trump. Or with the journalist Nemi El-Hassan, who was not allowed to moderate “Quarks” in 2021 because she was at an anti-Israel Al-Quds demonstration in 2014. A modern public broadcaster would have to find a clear position against sexism and act according to it. At the same time, it is up to all of us to keep up the pressure. Gisèle Pelicot told us: “Shame must change sides”. Showing the extent of Mischke’s behavior in a large-scale investigation before the show starts is more than a good start. Let’s hope that the waves of outcry can still be heard on ARD.