First, the ORF sends a contribution, then the editors apologized directly for it: The ORF magazine "Cultural Monday" had broadcast on Monday an interview with Jan Böhmermann. This was about his exhibition in the Grazer Künstlerhaus, in which the satirist deals with the identity of Austria and the "Motherland Germany", as Böhmermann himself describes it. It is a further development of the installation "DEUSCTHLAND", which was opened in 2017 in the NRW Forum Düsseldorf.
The presenter Clarissa Stadler announced the conversation as a "polemical sweep of Austria". In the conversation, Böhmermann worked on the Austrian ÖVP-FPÖ government for the young Federal Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache.
Among other things, Boehmerer stated that it was "not normal for the country to be run by a 32-year-old insurance agent". He also spoke of "folksverschetzender shit," the Vice Chancellor "raushaut" on Facebook. That was "no condition" - as well as Heinz-Christian Strache's verbal attacks on journalists.
"So far so the views of the satirist Jan Böhmermann to Austria," moderated Stadler after the interview and continued: "The ORF dissociates itself from the provocative and political statements of Böhmermann." Then she added: "But as you know, satire is allowed to reproduce everything and public broadcasting artistic opinion."
This moderation did not seem to be a spontaneous reaction, but sounded to viewers as an editorially-coordinated statement, as is customary in such broadcasts. For dealing with the Böhmermann interview, the ORF announced at the request of SPIEGEL ONLINE for the afternoon to an opinion, which has not yet received.
The reaction of Böhmermann to the cultural program was not long in coming. "Delicious joke / sartiere at culture Monday in orf straight, express distance from interviewed after a broadcast interview," he wrote on Twitter. He also mentioned another article in the ORF magazine in which the word neo-Nazi was "barked away".
delicious joke / sartiere during the cultural assembly in the @ORF just, after a broadcast interview expressly distance from the interviewed and wegpiepsen words or parts of sentences.
was a joke / sahtire, right?
because, fear: no.
Oh god god austria, ey.
For several weeks now, there has been much discussion in Austria about the independence of the media: Shortly after Easter, the right-wing populist FPÖ had heavily attacked the ORF moderator Armin Wolff after he had conducted a critical interview with the FPÖ general secretary and top candidate for the European elections, Harald Vilimsky ,
The ORF Foundation Council Chairman Norbert Steger, former FPÖ leader, had then advised Wolf to a "break": If he was "Mr. Wolf", "I would take a sabbatical, drive at fee-paying costs through the world and reinvent myself" he had told the newspaper "Österreich". Observers rated the process as an attack on the freedom of the press in Austria.