Let me translate the most important passages:
"The Clarkson Case
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Everywhere and nowhere
Many commentators commented one single thought: incidents like this will always cost you your job, wherever and in whatever industry. I dispute that. Entertainment media like Top Gear ?make cinema?, as a colleague of mine explained it when I asked him why they made me ride a motorcycle for a photo shoot in a summer outfit in sub-zero temperatures. Best case, the result looks like some people have had some fun. And that is even true. Most people in the media love their jobs, because they are great. But what the public fails to see is this: making cinema is hard, and everyone who ever saw them filming knows: The Top Gear vrew works their butts off.
This means that breakdowns like this one probably occur significantly more often in the media than, say, in an insurance office. I myself have witnessed severe arguments with comparable abuse and sometimes even bodily violence on several occasions in different media productions. It would help nobody in these cases to always just fire the one who hit first. To the contrary, many more productions would have to be dropped. Hollywood could no longer produce anything at all.
That is the reason why it is mainly media professionals who come to Clarkson?s aid: because they know what it is actually all about. (Piers Morgan, of all people...)
(hardships suffered by film crews... 16 hour shifts.... producers paying meals out of their own pocket...)
Being allowed to or having to
In the end, the decision is up to the BBC, and it has reached a verdict. But they could of course have reached a different one, and a media organisation with a different financial structure probably would have done so. Thing is though, and that is the very point: Top Gear would never have been created by a different organisation in the first place. The BBC demands very high ethical standards. In exchange, it grants degrees of freedom that are not possible anywhere else. A show like Top Gear would be difficult to imagine on private television. Not even because of any drastic verbiage, but because of the independence. No private TV station could allow itself to produce endless features on subjects the likes of ?The Truth about Peugeot: Crap of the Century?. Because you need to think of the advertising clients.
And that is exactly where I think lies a trap for the BBC. It would of course have been possible to compensate Tymon with the larger part of Clarkson?s outstanding annual salary, or to demand a public apology from Clarkson, or any other of a whole selection of conceivable amends which would also have helped poor Tymon, who now faces the wrath of the fans. In their noble endeavour to exact their high ethical standards and therefore sanction this crass offence by sacking, the BBC?s leadership fails to take into account what kind of a message they send, or maybe they even tacitly approved sending it because they found it to be of little relevance. For other media do not quote previous shouting incidents as proof of Clarkson?s difficulty (there have been some), but prefer to quote his controversial statements. And that gets up my grill something fierce.
ALL of these statements are allowed. Each of these sound bites would get hooting and applause by any of you critics in a pub, as long as it swam along the lines of your own opinion. But there is no quality difference between a pub and a TV show, only a quantitative one. A statement at the bar is just as public as everything a TV presenter says, and just as impossible to take back, albeit at a smaller scale. The things these people quote! The thing with the ?people carriers? for example and their comparison to venereal diseases. You do not have to agree with that opinion. It is still allowed to voice it.
Or Clarkson?s commentary that the Germans must have trained better for the 2014 World Cup. I don?t even know where to begin with my non-comprehension! Wasn?t that just a simple fact, which was proven by the way the tournament went? How CAN you ever conclude it was not allowed to say such things? But that point is moot anyway. The mob always cries for more censorship if you ask it. It always wants to see people hanged, even for the smallest offences. It wants revenge, even if the evidence is unclear. Mob members always want the same thing, until they themselves are singled out for a change. Then they suddenly demand protection by the modern rule of law, with freedom of opinion and without prejudgement. Therefore it is a good thing that the mob is not allowed to decide many things and that most of democracy is indirect.
With Top Gear, the BBC has shown that a largely independent format like Top Gear with lots of strong opinions is indeed possible against all odds. You can hate things without objective proof. You can say stupid things. You should not be surprised about a strong headwind. But that ubiquitous anticipatory obedience that pervades our complete society will not advance our culture in any shape or form. With the sacking of Clarkson, now everyone will return back to thinking that things like Top Gear are impossible. Just goes to show, doesn?t it? That is a big setback for society. In the bigger scheme of things, there was hardly anything more harmless than Top Gear. Despite this, what now floats on the top is the idea that ?you just can?t do these sorts of things?. AWhich is a tragedy. A great one. Because it is not true. It was possible. And it would still be possible if Clarkson had been able to restrain himself, or even just not hit him in the face, or if the BBC had decided to sanction it differently. But how will it go on now?
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The team could easily regroup and pull off its show elsewhere. But where? There is only one BBC. The only alternatives are stations financed by advertising or Pay TV. Top gear in ad-financed private TV would still be entertaining but of necessity castrated in its independence toward manufacturers, because they are needed to buy ads. In Pay TV, this problem would not occur [I think he?s wrong here ? if he?d seen any Pay TV he?d know there?s a LOT of advertising going on even there ? Cancun] but Top Gear would vanish behind a pay wall for a large part of the young global audience, and that would be tragic for the whole industry, because at least I for one have not yet seen any better PR for the car as an object of great emotions. I?d watch both, but with a tear in my eye.
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Now watching some Top Gear episodes from the archive. It probably is not going to get any better."