The federal states spent six years debating a reform of public service broadcasting and finally agreed on a state media treaty that gives the broadcasters even more freedom and the supervisory bodies as representatives of the citizens more power, and then this: the scandal surrounding the resigned RBB director Patricia Schlesinger and the resigned head of the board of directors Wolf-Dieter Wolf throws everything overboard.

Michael Hanfeld

responsible editor for feuilleton online and "media".

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Suddenly there are demands for control and transparency that were previously unthinkable.

There may have been criticism, for example of the fantastic top salaries, waste of funds or the building frenzy (not only the RBB invests millions in concrete, WDR, SWR and BR do the same), in public broadcasting - nothing happened.

There were complaints about not enough money, and the broadcasting fee increased.

If he didn't, for example when the Prime Minister of Saxony-Anhalt refused, the Federal Constitutional Court helped, which equated the right to freedom of the press in the case of public broadcasting with the right to undisturbed allocation of funds.

Cap directors' salaries

And now that the Schlesinger-Wolf case is a hint as to how things could really go on in the broadcasters?

Nepotism instead of service to democracy?

There are demands from all sides to really strengthen the supervisory bodies as control bodies, to rule out the accumulation of offices and to give the state audit offices more insight into the finances of public law.

And the Berlin CDU is in favor of taking a look at the salaries of the directors and other top staff.

It cannot be explained why directors are paid more than the Federal President, says the CDU state chairman Kai Wegner in the “Welt am Sonntag”.

Performance-related bonuses should be banned, especially if these bonuses were also paid out for downsizing.

That RBB had exactly that

An examination carried out by the NDR indicates that the alleged behavior, because of which Patricia Schlesinger had to resign as director of the RBB and chairwoman of the ARD, might not be entirely new.

There it is examined how the order for the film "The Good Goering" was awarded in 2016.

At that time, Schlesinger headed the NDR program area culture and documentation.

One of the scriptwriters of the docu-drama was her husband, the journalist Gerhard Spörl.

NDR reports that the film “The Good Goering” was a co-production by Vincent TV with NDR and BR.

The authors Jörg Brückner and Gerhard Spörl got involved through the production company that offered the project in 2014.

At that time, Patricia Schlesinger, as I said, was in charge of the program area responsible for documentation.

The connection between her and Gerhard Spörl was known and "all those responsible in the NDR" were aware of the "possible conflict of interest".

Therefore, the order was made with the approval of the television directorate.

In addition, the project was handed over to the "NDR television and coordination" program area "to avoid a possible conflict of interest".

The economic decisions were made according to the "four-eyes principle together with the NDR production department".

Nevertheless, the events are now being examined again.

The independently working anti-corruption officer intervened after receiving an inquiry from outside the NDR.