Breaking: Pizza

Germany’s biggest commercial network runs a midday magazine show that exists somewhere between tabloid television and genuine news. On a good day it manages both. On the day Angela Merkel traveled to Heidenau to publicly confront the far-right violence against refugees—riots, arson, mobs—the show was carrying a live interview with her. And then it cut away. Mid-sentence, live to air, the Chancellor of Germany got dropped.

They had a more urgent story to get to. Something was happening with pizza.

I keep turning this over and I’m not sure if it’s editorial cowardice, editorial stupidity, or just a production team so conditioned to prioritize soft content that they couldn’t recognize the weight of what they were interrupting. The refugee crisis was burning through Germany—literally, in some cases; shelters were being torched. And whatever was happening with pizza apparently couldn’t wait. Stefan Niggemeier, one of Germany’s sharpest media critics, flagged the clip and let it speak for itself. It didn’t need editorializing. The cut said everything about what the network believes its audience wants, and what it thinks news is for.