Overview
- A logo! interview with AfD candidate Ulrich Siegmund that aired on September 3 drew heavy criticism for airing long, unmediated answers and prompted more than 100 formal complaints to the ZDF-Fernsehrat.
- Student organisers launched a petition calling on KiKa not to run a similar unfiltered AfD interview in Mecklenburg‑Vorpommern and collected roughly 296,000 signatures by mid‑September.
- ZDF publicly acknowledged the earlier editorial concept was not appropriate and said the logo! team will embed and editorially contextualise AfD statements rather than publish full interviews online.
- Critics and the petition argued that the student interviewer was insufficiently prepared and that logo! failed to provide fact checks or journalistic framing that would have challenged misleading claims.
- The episode has reopened debate over how public broadcasters should handle controversial parties when reporting for children, raised questions for the ZDF-Fernsehrat about oversight, and may prompt tighter editorial safeguards before election coverage.