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WDR director Tom Buhrow has trouble with parts of his broadcasting council
Photo: Marius Becker/ dpa
The CDU members of the WDR Broadcasting Council have written a four-page fire letter to the director of the public broadcaster, Tom Buhrow.
This is reported by "Focus Online", which claims to have the letter available.
The authors make serious allegations against the broadcaster and make several demands on Buhrow.
According to the report, the NRW Deputy Group Leader Gregor Golland, his state parliament colleagues Florian Braun and Jan Heinisch and the two former members of parliament Kirstin Korte and Eva Vogt complain, among other things, that "incitement and the call for radicalization" against a democratic party are not part of the order of the public -legal broadcasting belonged.
The CDU broadcasting councils therefore refer to a video by the satirist and freelance WDR employee Jean-Philipp Kindler, who accused the CDU of racism on his private Instagram channel in the course of the debate after the New Year's Eve riots in Berlin and declared the Christian Democrats to be the enemy would have.
For example, in the video, Kindler says: »I want radicalization against this shitty party.
When it says, "Those were the bad foreigners who banged on New Year's Eve," the political exchange ended and "the agitation" had to begin.
And further: "But that's agitation, yes that's agitation.
I want to call for that.” In the video, the 26-year-old says that this statement is not meant to be ironic.
In the letter to Buhrow, the authors criticize the broadcaster for tolerating Kindler's statements and keeping him busy.
The broadcast should demonstrate a clear democratic attitude along with determination and "the ability of the WDR leadership to act in relation to such events and people".
According to "Focus Online", the authors of the letter are demanding a statement from Buhrow for the upcoming Broadcasting Council meeting on January 31, which consequences he has drawn against the author of the video.
Shortly after the video was published, several CDU politicians had criticized WDR.
The general secretary of the party, Mario Czaja, saw a border crossing.
On Twitter he wrote: No #GEZ fees for such agitation!
I will contact the director of @WDR.
That must have consequences.
More allegations, more demands
According to the report, the CDU broadcasting councilors also complain that the station broadcast comedian Moritz Neumeier's program, in which he joked about pedophilia and sex with people of short stature.
The broadcaster cut out the scenes in question at a later date.
According to the report, the CDU broadcasting councils now want to know “what quality criteria are specified internally for the relevant formats?”.
And: »Why these were not complied with in the present case?«.
The authors of the letter also apparently sharply criticized the reporting on the flood fronts in mid-July 2021 and in the second week of January 2023.
Especially after the failure of public broadcasters during the flood disaster on the Ahr and in NRW with their 149 deaths, according to the CDU broadcasting councillors, "the WDR still does not seem to have learned any lessons from these events".
When the heavy rain started between the Rhine and Weser in January 2023, the private local radio stations reported continuously about the danger situation.
Public broadcasting has largely remained silent.
The WDR only reported on the heavy rain weather conditions to recommend wearing rubber boots for the climate demonstration against the opencast coal mine in Lützerath.
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