Friday, January 6, 2012

German president, newspaper trade blows on whether he tried to prevent publication of a report about a loan

Germany’s president and its biggest-selling newspaper traded blows Thursday over whether he tried to prevent it from publishing a report on a controversial private loan, adding to the embattled head of state’s troubles. President Christian Wulff has faced intense pressure to explain himself since it emerged that he left an angry message Dec. 12 on the voicemail of Bild newspaper’s editor-in-chief Kai Diekmann — the day before the story appeared. Wulff insisted in a television interview Wednesday, in which he repeatedly stressed the importance of transparency, that he hadn’t tried to block the report and had merely asked for it to be delayed a day so that “we could talk about it, so that it could be correct.” But Diekmann expressed “astonishment” about that in a letter Thursday to Wulff. He wrote that Bild had already agreed to a one-day delay on Dec. 11, and that Wulff’s spokesman — whom the president fired just before Christmas without giving reasons — provided and then retracted responses before Wulff called Diekmann. He said Bild wanted to publish the text of the message “in order to clear up misunderstandings regarding the actual motivation and contents of your call” and asked for Wulff’s approval “in the spirit of transparency you have spoken of.”

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