After the Eralp interview: Do the media have to stick to agreements?

In principle, journalists are allowed to publish what they have researched and learned. This guarantees freedom of the press. However, publication is excluded if personal rights are violated. In each individual case, courts must weigh up the rights of the person concerned and the media's interest in publishing.

On television and radio, an interview is usually broadcast without the interviewee approving the interview. With newspapers and online media, however, things are different: there it is common for interviews to be approved by the interviewee. Only if he agrees will the interview be published.

If such an agreement is broken and something is published that the interviewee does not want to see printed, he or she has a good chance of having the publication banned by the court. Courts view the authorization agreement as binding. It is a civil law contract that a newspaper must adhere to.

Regulation in the Eralp case is not clear

In the case of the information that Spiegel published about left-wing politician Elif Eralp, it is not clear whether it was also included in the interview arrangement. The information that Eralp was afraid of certain Hamas sympathizers was apparently accidentally sent to Der Spiegel.

Some media lawyers therefore believe that the authorization address would only extend to the questions and answers in the interview, but not to the comments on the authorization, which in this case were accidentally sent to Der Spiegel. It remains to be seen whether the courts would see it that way.