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Wildfire in the ARD: The RBB scandal is not singular, but systemic

2022-08-23T03:37:46.606Z


Wildfire in the ARD: The RBB scandal is not singular, but systemic Created: 08/23/2022, 05:24 By: Georg Anastasiadis Merkur editor-in-chief Georg Anastasiadis comments on the RBB scandal. © Monika Skolimowska/dpa/Klaus Haag Waste and embezzlement, as they came to light in the scandal surrounding the RBB director Schlesinger, who has now been fired, are systematic at the public broadcasters. Po


Wildfire in the ARD: The RBB scandal is not singular, but systemic

Created: 08/23/2022, 05:24

By: Georg Anastasiadis

Merkur editor-in-chief Georg Anastasiadis comments on the RBB scandal.

© Monika Skolimowska/dpa/Klaus Haag

Waste and embezzlement, as they came to light in the scandal surrounding the RBB director Schlesinger, who has now been fired, are systematic at the public broadcasters.

Politicians must act now, comments Georg Anastasiadis.

"Singular" are the events at the scandal broadcaster RBB, claims the director of Bavarian Radio, Katja Wildermuth.

That may be true as far as the extent of the criminal misconduct at Berlin Radio is concerned.

But the problems of wastage and embezzlement of the 8.4 billion euros a year luxury public-law institutions are neither new nor surprising.

Where there is so much fee-payer money to be had, people get creative.

Be it by directing money into one's own pocket or by forcibly delighting the public with more and more niche offers from too many broadcasters.

At stake is the acceptance of public service broadcasting

The crisis is not over with the immediate dismissal of Raffke director Patricia Schlesinger.

Wildermuth and the other directors make it too easy for themselves if they only see individual misconduct at work and not systemic failure and use this argument to torpedo reforms.

There is too much money and too little control in the system.

Both must be changed.

The internal bodies, administrative and broadcasting boards, are too much part of the system to be its powerful controllers.

The director of Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, Karola Wille, reaches even deeper into her bag of tricks and laments the “delegitimization” of public broadcasters as a result of the RBB debate.

She accuses "populist forces of attacking authorities that are committed to the truth".

Attack as best defense?

That worked before

when the CDU Prime Minister of Saxony-Anhalt, Haseloff, wanted to prevent the last fee increase.

The public-law family then presented him as an AfD henchman.

The defamation of critics must not succeed again.

At stake is the acceptance of public service broadcasting, for ARD the case has long since become a conflagration.

The fee payers rightly expect that politicians will now wake up from their shock and act.

Or should only they be obliged to save?

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2022-08-23

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