The Munich terrorist attacks by the Black September group put the state media of the GDR in an awkward position. On one hand, the brazenness of the attacks and their international prominence meant GDR had to condemn the murder of the Israeli athletes. As a member of the international community, the GDR government was compelled to condemn such an attack at an international sports competition like the Olympics. Yet, the GDR had positioned itself, like the rest of the Eastern bloc, as a champion of the rights of the Palestinians and the state media frequently lambasted the Israelis for their allegedly imperialist actions in the Middle East. Therefore the GDR's state media sought to thread the needle by restricting their condemnation of Black September in only vague generalities while simultaneously lambasting any Israeli actions against either the Arab states or the PLO.

The front page of 6 September 1972 edition of Neues Deutschland condemned the attack as both a violation of the Olympic spirit and of the ideals of the GDR's socialist internationalism. After describing the seizure of the Israeli athletes at the Olympic Village, the paper noted that:

Official circles within the German Democratic Republic condemn this despicable crime in the sharpest terms. The GDR categorically rejects terrorism as a means to achieve political goals. Such terrorist actions also do great harm to the Olympic movement.

While the 6 September main news article on the shooting only spoke of the Black September group in generalities, often using criminal and terrorist interchangeably, the editorial "Zum terroristischen Überfall auf das olympische Dorf" on page 2 actually identified the group by name, but was still hazy about the details:

According to information received from Munich, the assassinations were carried out by the organization "Black September". These terrorists have also inflicted serious harm on the friendly Arab states connected to us. It is well-known that the GDR is against Israeli aggression and on the side of the Arab states and seeks a political solution to the conflict on the basis of Security Council resolutions. Acts of terrorism, as perpetrated in Munich, can lead, of course, neither to a just peaceful solution, nor otherwise contribute to the evacuation of Israeli-occupied Arab territories.

Black September appears in both of these accounts as a somewhat nebulous and shadowy criminal group, and one emphatically not supported by the GDR, even in a tangential manner.

This schema of selective rejection and condemnation would become more apparent in the days following the attack as the state media began condemning Israeli and US reaction to the attacks. The Israeli air attacks on PLO bases in Syria and Lebanon on 8 September drew condemnation from the GDR press. These articles often carried an implicit connection to the seemingly random terror of Black September and the Israeli response. For example, the headline of 10 September Neues Deutschland report on the airstrikes was "Israels Bomben töteten Frauen und Kinder" and described the airstrikes against "peaceful villages" as "barbaric." An 11 September photo of the aftermath of the airstrikes called the Israeli pilots "air pirates," an word frequently used during the Second World War to describe the seemingly indiscriminate bombing of the Western Allies. Nor was this type of extreme language limited to the GDR press. Neues Deutschland's provocatively titled article "Entschieden Israels Luftterror verurteilt" reproduced the Foreign Ministry's condemnation of the Israeli bombings. The Foreign Ministry called the bombing part of

a chain of recent aggressive actions shows that [the Israelis] again and again attempt to impose their predatory order by brute force, with bombs, napalm and missiles against the social progress and objectives of the Arab world. The population of the GDR agrees with all the democratic, peaceful forces in the world that a peaceful solution of all outstanding problems in the Middle East requires the withdrawal of all Israeli troops from the occupied Arab territories and the implementation of Security Council Resolution 242 of 22 November 1967. The GDR most emphatically calls for the immediate cessation of acts of Israeli aggression.

[The GDR] also opposes the the anti-Arab slander campaign in the imperialist countries, which is fueled and exploited by the reactionary ruling circles of Israel. Together with all progressive forces in the world, the GDR will continue to support and show solidarity to the Arab peoples in their just struggle against the Israeli imperialist aggression.

On 16 September, both Neue Zeit and Berliner Zeitung contained small articles noting that the Arab states and the PLO had disavowed Black September. The Berliner Zeitung noted that the executive committee of the PLO called upon " the Arab peoples to exercise vigilance and to put all their efforts forward, to thwart the provocative plans of Israel and the United States." A small article in Neues Deutschland on the PLO's declaration also noted that the organization claimed the terrorist act was a pretext "exploited by Israel and the imperialist circles in the West to justify the aggression against Syria and Lebanon."

One of the salient features of both the GDR's coverage of the attacks and the Israeli response is the minimal contextualization given to these events. The GDR press presented Black September as a criminal organization and an outlier to the wider cause of the Palestinian people, which the GDR supported. Conversely, the GDR press portrayed the immediate Israeli military response as similarly indiscriminate as Black September's actions and barely connected to the events in Munich. The 20 September issue of Neues Deutschland contained a commentary from the Soviet news agency TASS even charged that the Israelis were exploiting the tragedy for their own ends. The TASS commentary contended that:

Israeli propaganda tries to justify the invasion in Lebanon and the armed provocations against Syria with the tragedy of Munich. But one must ask what Lebanon and Syria have to do with this incident. Also, the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Damascus have declared that they have nothing in common with the actions of the "Black September' group. It is completely obvious that the propaganda noise in Tel Aviv has trumpeted the incident at Munich, and is nothing else than an attempt by the Israeli extremists to mislead the world public opinion in order to realize their aggressive plans.

The TASS report concluded that this military action was reflective of Tel Aviv's "lust for expansion," that was counter to all the interests of both the Arabs and their supporters in the Eastern bloc.

This pattern of blame-shifting and selective interpretation of events emblematic of the rather Manichean picture the GDR tried to present of global affairs. This paradigm would be repeated again during the German Autumn of 1977 when the GDR press devoted relatively little coverage to RAF terrorism, sometimes conflating them with regular criminals, but lavished attention upon the FRG police's response to these acts which the press contended was indicative of sinister motives on the part of the imperialist West.