Obama, Murphy highlight of RIAS Berlin Commission alumni program in USA

November 3, 2021

Obama, Murphy highlight of RIAS Berlin Commission alumni program in USA

Thirty top journalists from across Germany took part in the first RIAS Berlin Commission program designed especially for RIAS alumni and senior editors from Germany. The aim of the week-long program in New York at the end of October was to learn more about how the country’s largest city has emerged from a difficult 20-month period coping with the Covid-19 pandemic.

It featured nearly 20 meetings with a wide variety of journalists, politicians, diplomats, law enforcement experts, African-American community leaders, Jewish leaders, non-government organizations, experts on the trauma of 9/11, a Broadway actor and experts from the world of fashion.

Because many of the American newsrooms and offices were still closed to external visitors and in some cases to their own staff members, most of the RIAS guest speakers held their meetings either outdoors in parks, in front of or in the lobbies of iconic buildings like Rockefeller Center, on walking tours or in cafes or restaurants.

It was the third such program for RIAS alumni — some of the 1,900 journalists on both sides of the Atlantic who have taken part in standard two- to three-week or longer programs in the past 25 years. A first group of 30 American RIAS alumni took part in a similar week-long alumni program in November 2019 to observe and accompany events marking the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

A second group of 17 American RIAS alumni took part in a week-long program in September 2021 to observe and accompany the German federal elections on September 27 — and many of them reported on the elections to their stations back home in the United States. The group of 30 Germans who visited New York were originally scheduled to visit Washington DC in October 2020 right before the U.S. presidential election but that program was postponed to 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The goal of these new alumni programs is to help keep alive the spirit of the Cold War-era radio and TV station RIAS as well as to strengthen the ties and networks between German and American journalists in both countries,” said RIAS Berlin Commission Executive Director Erik Kirschbaum. “It’s exciting to see how many German and American journalists have kept in contact with each other over the years and even more exciting to see how many new contacts are made among German and American journalists are made on each of our first three alumni programs.”

On their trip to New York: the German alumni watched with press passes as New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy campaigned for re-election at a rally in nearby Newark together with support from former President Barack Obama; learned more about NBC news from Adam Reiss, Bryan Weakland,  Jake Ward, Tiffany Zeno and Michael Gargiulo; learned more in Harlem about racism from the Reverend Calvin O. Butts from the Abyssinian Church and New York Amsterdam News publisher Elinor Tatum.

The Germans also had an eye-opening walking tour of the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn with Frida Vizel, who left the Hasidic Jewish community many years ago and expertly describes how the closely knit families there have managed for generations to stave off the usual assimilation processes in the United States. Vizel has been giving small-group tours of the fascinating section of Brooklyn that is just across the East River from Manhattan that many Americans know precious little about.

The German broadcast journalists from leading networks across the country also visited Jörg Schumacher, director of the Goethe Institute in New York, AJC Executive Director David Harris and had the chance to interview Broadway actor Michael Fatica before seeing the musical “Chicago”.

There was a visit to the 9/11 Tribute Museum and a moving talk with survivor Gordon Huie, a talk with Anti-Defamation League New York Director Scott Richman, Germany’s U.N. deputy ambassador Günter Sautter, General Consul David Gill, DAAD North America director Benedikt Brisch, and a talk with New York Times “The Daily” senior producer Clare Toeniskoetter before a RIAS reunion meeting with New York-area American alumni and former German Health Minister Ulla Schmidt at “1014” Fifth Avenue — the former Goethe House in the heart of New York City designed to create a space to explore global challenges and opportunities that is quickly becoming an important home for German-American encounters.

NTV stock market guru and entrepreneur Markus Koch, former NYC police commissioner and security analyst Peter Donald, fashion mogul Tory Burch, crisis communication manager Jude Engelmayer, U.N. director Human Rights Watch Lou Charbonneau, ARD’s New York offices, and Spiegel correspondent Marc Pitzke were also featured guest speakers. The next RIAS Berlin Commission alumni program is scheduled to take place in late October 2022 in Washington DC just ahead of the 2022 midterm elections in the United States. Anyone interested in that program should contact their alumni chapter leaders in Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg, Munich or Mainz or write info@darkseagreen-dog-940501.hostingersite.com. The next alumni program for Americans will be in 2023. 

Here are the participants from the October 2021 RIAS alumni program to New York:

Martin Richter, Phoenix, Bonn, Michail Paweletz, NDR Hamburg, Vladimir Balzer, Deutschlandradio, Berlin, Mitri Sirin, ZDF, Berlin, Anja Heyde, ZDF, Berlin, Mirja Fiedler, NDR, Hamburg, Andre Schünke, NDR, Hamburg, Anja Martini, ARD, Hamburg, Anne Sieger, ARD, Cologne, Björn Heckmann, RTL, Cologne, Cornelia Gerhard, Phoenix, Bonn, Guido Meyer, Deutschlandfunk, Bonn, Iris Ollech, Phoenix, Bonn, Kerstin Ruskowski, Deutschlandfunk Nova/WDR, Cologne, Lydia Leipert, BR, Munich, Marc Krueger, podcast freelancer, Berlin, Maren Hellwege-Beck, BR, Munich, Nina Hansen, ARD, Hamburg, Petra Gute, RBB, Berlin, Philipp Eins, freelance radio/podcast, Berlin, Sabine Krebs, ARD, Nairobi, Kenya, Steffi Clodius, ARD, Hamburg, Susan Falkenstein, BR radio, Munich, Boris Baumholt, WDR, Duesseldorf, Bartosz Dudek, Deutsche Welle radio, Bonn, Marius Zekri, NDR radio, Hamburg, Micha Wagenbach, ZDF, Berlin, Oliver Sallet, Deutsche Welle, Washington DC, Vivienne Radermacher, WDR und Michael Stang, WDR Cologne