The Article I Didn’t Write
I run this journal. I write about a lot of things here—bleeding girls, the greatest film ever made, the upcoming five weeks in Japan that I’ve been boring everyone about. What I did not write was a piece published yesterday titled "Sarah Kuttner—Die dumme Rassistin." That was written by Meltem Toprak, one of our contributors, about the ongoing controversy surrounding the Berlin TV presenter and author. What I wrote this morning, by contrast, was a series of replies to readers who sent me threats because of it. Dumb threats. But threats.
The background: Kuttner used a racial slur at a public reading, which Spiegel reported on. German TV personalities Mola Adebisi and Benjamin Bäumle both commented publicly on the incident. Meltem wrote about all of this and then drew her own conclusion—that based on those accounts, she considered Kuttner to be both dim and racist. That last part became the problem. Not because the subject is off-limits, but because the claim rested on secondhand statements and unverified fragments, which makes it easy to attack and impossible to defend.
I want to be clear about something: when Sara writes that she wants to slaughter people, that’s Sara’s piece, not mine. When Kornelia explains why urinating brings world peace, that’s Kornelia’s piece, not mine. I’m not in the habit of ventriloquizing my writers. But I carry the editorial responsibility for what gets published here, which means the threats land in my inbox regardless of who hit publish. That’s the deal.
What I want this journal to be is provocative, personal, and honest. Brave in the specific sense of saying uncomfortable things clearly—not just being loud. The one rule underneath all of that: don’t put something in print that you can’t back up. Attack freely, but don’t lie. Whether something is objective or subjective matters less than whether it can stand up to scrutiny. Meltem’s piece crossed that line, not in intent but in execution—the claims supporting the central accusation weren’t solid enough to hold it.
We’ve taken the article down, with Meltem’s agreement. I want to apologize to Sarah Kuttner on behalf of this journal for publishing something that didn’t meet the standard it should have. Everyone here learned something from this, myself included. And then I’m going back to writing about Japan, because I leave in six days and there’s still a lot I need to figure out.