Saturday, 30 April 2016

'Far-right' or 'right-wing'?




When it began covering the violence outside Alternative for Germany's conference in Stuttgart its online headline ran as follows:

Germany AfD meeting: Clashes before far-right conference

and the opening paragraph of its report ran as follows:
Hundreds of left-wing demonstrators have tried to block people entering a far-right party conference in the German city of Stuttgart.
After about four hours though (according to NewsSniffer), the headline was changed to:

Germany AfD meeting: Clashes before right-wing conference 

and the opening paragraph became:
Hundreds of left-wing demonstrators have tried to block people entering a right-wing party conference in the German city of Stuttgart.
Maybe a different editor took over. 

That editor (or someone else) also added that the 'left-wing demonstrators' were "carrying sticks and iron bars and burning tyres".