A political storm is brewing in Germany over a video involving Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis giving the country his middle-finger, but all is not quite as it seems.
Tune in to the Right Hook at 5.50pm, where Shane Coleman will talk to the Irish Times' Berlin correspondent Derek Scally about just what's going on: http://www.newstalk.com/player/
A German TV star has come under scrutiny after he admitted faking a video showing the Greece’s Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis giving Germany the middle finger – despite the fact Mr Varoufakis has strongly asserted its authenticity. Now ZDF, the television channel which ran the video, has said that presenter Jan Böhmermann’s confession was fake.
Böhmermann fronts the satirical TV show Neo Magazin Royale on the public broadcasting channel, and said that he had been waiting for days for the media to question the authenticity of the footage, but that no outlet had gotten around to by Wednesday.
"Sorry Mr Varoufakis, we won't do it again," he said, in a post claiming that a member of his production team had doctored the footage to outrage German viewers, which you can see in the tweet below:
Sorry, @yanisvaroufakis! https://t.co/BSkYrbIIle (now with ENGLISH subtitles, full English and Greek subtitles available soon) #varoufake
— Jan Böhmermann (@janboehm) March 18, 2015
The video of Mr Varoufakis was taken at a conference he attended in Croatia in 2013, before he was elected when Syriza swooped to power earlier this year.
But on Monday, after a social-media controversy had taken Germany by storm over the video, Mr Varoufakis posted a link to his own YouTube footage of his speech, revealing that the finger had not been added in digitally.
ZDF television said on Thursday morning that Böhmermann's video had been faked, in response to #Varoufake trending in Germany.
Programming director Norbert Himmler said: "We see ourselves forced to identify Neo Magazin Royale as a satirical show in future. Jan Böhmermann is certainly going to be out of consideration as anchorman of the daily news."
Mr Varoufakis commented on the scandal again on Wednesday night, championing Böhmermann for his satirical look at the ongoing Eurozone crisis:
@janboehm Humour, satire & self deprecation are great solvents of blind nationalism. We politicians need you badly. https://t.co/CCXzHtfuKt
— Yanis Varoufakis (@yanisvaroufakis) March 19, 2015
The middle-finger video is not the first time that Neo Magazin Royale has poked fun at the Greek Minister and the attitudes of German people to Greece. Last month, Böhmermann and his team produced a viral song V for Varoufakis (performed in English, with German subtitles), making light of a number of German stereotypes while claiming the minister puts the “Hell in Hellenic.”
You can watch that video below:
