THE RUDOLF REPORT

11. HUNTING GERMAR RUDOLFformation from anyone involved in the trial. So it happened that repeatedlyitems were misunderstood or misreported. One might not attributepurposeful distortion to the journalists if it were not for the factthat these misunderstandings were always decidedly unfavorable toRudolf.The partisan orientation of the Süddeutscher Rundfunk, SDR, anotherpublic broadcasting station (almost all German public broadcastingstations are left-wing oriented) was exposed when it decided toreport only one side of the story, namely that of the investigating policeofficer.Since his statements were apparently not critical enough for theSDR, soon items were invented. The SDR took the only two statementsfrom the several hundred pages of correspondence in which Rudolf hadmentioned two Jewish personalities in a disapproving way, which werecited by the police officer. SDR then asserted falsely, the officer hadcharacterized the rest of my correspondence “as the vilest incitementand defamation”. The SDR also attributed to the police officer that hehad understood Rudolf to have said he wanted to “rewrite the historyof Germany from 1871 onward, without the Holocaust or World WarII”, which in view of the absurdity of the statement may cause doubtabout the sanity of the journalists involved. And of course, the SDRwas silent on the substantial mitigating evidence presented by the defensein the following months. 625With a few exceptions, the entire media was silent until the end ofthe trial. It could be seen from the behavior of the journalists presentthat they were not looking for the real story, but were intent on bringingin a sacrifice for the Zeitgeist: all but one of them—a new personfrom Südwestfunk radio—resorted only to the prosecuting attorneysand judges in their search for information.The Stuttgarter Zeitung (StZ) provides a clear example of the tendentiousmethod of reporting used by the media. Since not enough incriminatingmaterial turned up in the several thousand pages of Rudolf’scorrespondence that were found in the first house search in September1993, on January 27, 1995, the StZ conjured up “writing in thehand of the accused with indisputable [...] xenophobic content”. However,in the whole trial there was never any talk of xenophobia or racism,because there was never any basis for same. At the end of a piece625 Süddeutscher Rundfunk, in all four afternoon radio programs on Nov. 25, 1994.391