Faulty Flags

One night, German viewers were surely scratching their heads while watching "Tagesthemen," the public broadcaster ARD's flagship nightly news program.

Something didn't seem quite right. No, it wasn't the fact that the anchor was talking about Germany entering the semi-finals of Euro 2008 -- a surprise to many. But there was, er, something off…

Perhaps the person manning the shop at ARD's graphics department that night had been celebrating Germany's Euro performance a little too intensely, or perhaps hadn't paid attention in civics class years before. He or she had mixed up the order of colors on the German flag. Instead of black-red-gold, the flag on the screen behind the anchor was red-black-gold.

It left the broadcaster a little red in the face.

But when some two weeks later, the same program during a report on the new US embassy building in Berlin showed a US flag that had one more white stripe than it should have, station higher-ups turned absolutely purple and heads, evidently, have rolled.

"This new slip-up is not at all acceptable," said Thomas Hinrichs, a top editor at ARD. "Besides technical problems, there was human error at play. Therefore we are taking action regarding personnel."

The broadcaster would not elaborate on what those actions are, and would not confirm information obtained by the dpa news agency that an employee in the graphics department was immediately let go and a duty editor was reassigned.