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LInda Zervakis and Olaf Scholz at re:publica: The chancellor makes the announcements
Photo: Annette Riedl / picture alliance / dpa
The Chancellor is coming to re:publica!
When the organizers were able to announce last year that Olaf Scholz would be present for a discussion at the digital conference, it was big news.
During her time as head of government, Angela Merkel never agreed to do this.
As the Berlin daily newspaper "taz" now reveals, the appearance came about under dubious conditions: Scholz demanded to determine who was interviewing him.
According to "taz", the chancellor chose Linda Zervakis, the former "Tagesschau" spokeswoman, who switched to the private broadcaster ProSieben in 2021.
There she moderated, among other things, a trill before the last federal election, in which Olaf Scholz also took part.
According to the newspaper report, the Scholz specification was the subject of controversial discussion in the re:publica organizing team.
But then you didn't want to block the chance and agreed to the conditions from the Chancellery.
Despite the novelty factor, the conversation was viewed rather critically in the press.
SPIEGEL wrote: "When asked about Germany's blatant deficits in digitization, the Chancellor replied that it was not all bad." There were hardly any concrete statements from Scholz, and there were hardly any critical questions from Zervakis either.
The taz revelation could still have consequences for Zervakis.
Anne Will has just announced that she wants to stop being a talk presenter on ARD at the end of the year.
Many see a possible successor in Zervakis, who mostly gets weak ratings for her ProSieben formats.
If she were available as a soft talker at the request of politicians, it would hardly increase the chances of getting the prestigious Sunday slot on ARD.
Zervakis and the federal press office did not want to comment on the process when asked by the taz.
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