Jens Söring: The Great Correction Begins!

Here’s a note for English readers. Earlier today, the first two episodes of the 8-part podcast “The Söring System” (in German, for now) were released. They’re available on all podcast hosting services, for example here. Chapter 1 is entitled “The Case”, Chapter 2 “The Confessions”. Both feature extensive interviews with Ricky Gardner and, especially, Terry Wright. They tell the story of how Bedford County authorities began investigating the grisly double-murders and how and why Jens Söring became a suspect and eventually confessed to the murders in detail.

Also today, the German media-criticism site Übermedien released a very long title story (g, paywall) on how the German media have reacted to Jens Söring’s media campaign entitled “The Amazing Media Career of the Convicted Double-Murderer Jens Söring”:

Übermedien editor Stefan Niggemeier tells the story of how Jens Söring’s story was taken up by the German media long before his release from prison in 2019, especially by Karin Steinberger, a journalist who works for the Sueddeutsche Zeitung and who co-directed the 2016 documentary “Das Versprechen / Killing For Love”. Niggemeier points out that even though Steinberger and other journalists usually inserted a fig-leaf statement about how Söring remains a convicted killer, the overall tone of the coverage was clearly biased in favor of Söring’s innocence claims. ProSieben, by the way, gave Übermedien a statement in which they regretted broadcasting their slanted Söring feature, saying they have now withdrawn it for not meeting their journalistic standards.

Niggemeier also describes how Söring, his supporters, and consultants have developed a procedure for bringing new recruits to his cause by feeding them carefully-curated “Press Packs” which leave out all of the information pointing to Söring’s guilt. And there is a lot of that. During the next few days, I will be publishing some excerpts from the Übermedien piece in German and English and commenting on them. I’ll also be working on an English summary.

In any event, The Great Correction has now begun in earnest. No German journalist should ever have accepted Söring’s story at face value without doing independent research into his claims. From this point on (at the very latest) they will have zero excuse to ignore their duties.

By all means invite Jens Söring, but have enough respect for your audience — and for the memory of Derek and Nancy Haysom, and for the truth — to ask Söring serious, well-informed questions about his claims. Take nothing he says about this case at face value.

More to come soon. Bleiben Sie daran / Stay tuned!