“Pure defamation” – Ines Geipel defends herself against the MDR
Ines Geipel was the chairwoman of the doping victim support association
Quelle: pa/Pacific Press/Michael Debets
A documentary film by MDR causes a stir. In particular, the publicist and former GDR competitive athlete Ines Geipel raises the most serious allegations. The broadcaster has now admitted to mistakes.
Dhe publicist and former GDR competitive athlete Ines Geipel defended herself after the broadcast of an MDR documentary against allegations made there. “The film as a whole is pure slander,” she told the “Sächsische Zeitung”. She was portrayed on the show as an impostor and fact falsifier.
The MDR had admitted omissions. Accordingly, it would have been “journalistically necessary to confront Ms. Geipel with individual statements by the protagonists of the film at the end of the research,” the broadcaster said about two and a half weeks ago. “The allegations that are made in relation to my biography are baseless in every respect,” said Geipel.
The documentary “Doping and Sealing – The Difficult Legacy of GDR Sports” was broadcast on MDR television at the end of January and is still available in the ARD media library. In it, Geipel, the former chairman of the doping victim support association, was criticized by former companions. According to MDR, it was about “alleged personal exaggerations and distortions of Ines Geipel in relation to her own biography and inconsistencies in her descriptions of the systematic, state-organized doping system in GDR sport”.
In 1989 Geipel fled East Germany
In a statement, MDR pointed out that Geipel had been asked for an interview early on, giving her the opportunity to express herself in the film. However, the MDR also acknowledged errors. The broadcaster has announced that it will take up the topic again. For the follow-up reporting, Ines Geipel is to be invited to the interview again.
Ines Geipel, born in Dresden in 1960, studied German in Jena before fleeing East Germany in the summer of 1989. She has been working as a writer since 1996. At the end of February 2023 she received the Erich Loest Prize, which is endowed with 10,000 euros. The Media Foundation of the Sparkasse Leipzig described her as a “committed and argumentative voice in the effort to examine the mechanisms of action of dictatorships”.
