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ARD boss Gniffke: "Give people a face and a voice"
Photo: Bernd Weissbrod / dpa
The new ARD chairman Kai Gniffke wants to strengthen the diversity of positions in the network of stations.
"Whenever we have the impression that people feel overlooked, it's our job to give these people a face and a voice," Gniffke told the Schweriner Volkszeitung.
It is at the heart of the public service mandate to make diversity heard in Germany.
This is particularly true in relation to East Germany.
Gniffke: "Perhaps we can get better at understanding and depicting the still existing differences in the perception of reality, even 30 years after unity, without arousing the suspicion that we want to educate people."
People are "smart enough to form their own opinions."
In the past, there had always been criticism that public broadcasters allegedly did not report in a balanced enough way.
Affair about Patricia Schlesinger
After an expense affair involving the former RBB director Patricia Schlesinger this year, the ARD was in a serious crisis.
Gniffke underlined the need for a reform of the public broadcasting network.
"ARD must reform itself," he said.
(Also read the current SPIEGEL story).
Gniffke emphasized that they didn't want to "leave the German market and its people to foreign tech companies." Every country has a media lifeline.
"It shouldn't be dependent on Elon Musk's whims or the Chinese algorithms at Tiktok." Elon Musk is the head of Twitter, TikTok a social media platform on which short video clips are shared.
According to Gniffke, the German landscape of publishers, public and commercial media is »the best media system in the world«.
Anyone who has indulged in media consumption in other countries recognizes the great potential in the German media system.
At the beginning of the year, Gniffke replaced WDR director Tom Buhrow as ARD chairman.
Buhrow has held the position on an interim basis since the resignation of RBB director Schlesinger, who was fired without notice, at the beginning of August.
The public service broadcasters are united in the ARD.
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