Thomas Deichmann

Thomas Deichmann (born 1962) is a German journalist, author and communication expert. He was the founder and from November 1992 to May 2011 editor-in-chief and publisher of the German magazine NovoArgumente. Since August 2011 he has been working as communication expert for banks and industries such as The Royal Bank of Scotland, BASF SE, and BRAIN AG.

Deichmann studied Civil Engineering at TU Darmstadt. In 1992, after earlier political activities, he began to work as an editor and journalist, writing first about international relations and then increasingly about issues to do with the natural sciences and their role in society.

In 1997, Deichmann received international attention when he published articles on the civil war in the former Yugoslavia (first in German, then in English and other languages). In one of these articles, Deichmann claimed that a frequently published image from August 1992, showing the Bosnian Muslim Fikret Alić behind barbed wire in Trnopolje camp was faked. Deichmann asserted that the British reporters from ITN, Penny Marshall and Ian Williams, had actually stood inside a compound surrounded by a barbed wire fence and from there filmed their famous pictures.

In February and 2000, to a libel case at the British High Court in London against LM magazine. At the beginning of his summation, High Court Judge Morland defined what the libel case was about: “Members of the jury, you may well think that in a democratic society it is vital that journalists are fearless, investigative reporters. It is, you may well think, of the utmost importance that they are accurate and fair reporters. It is right that one journalist, if he considers that another journalist has been inaccurate, unfair and misleading, should say so. But this case, you may think, is not about whether Penny Marshall and Ian Williams have been inaccurate, unfair or misleading; the nub of this case is whether the defendants have established that Penny Marshall and Ian Williams have deliberately – I emphasize that word, 'deliberately’ – compiled misleading television footage.’” LM could not prove such a deliberate mistake and lost the case.

...
Wikipedia