The newspaper's material claims that, according to the medium-term financial plan, which was presented at a recent meeting in the company, DW's budget in 2023 will be € 406 million, which is € 6 million more than in 2022. The budget for 2024 will again be € 400 million.
At the same time, in the coming year, DW will have to "independently get out of the deficit of € 20 million", and this was the reason for criticism, because the board of directors of Deutsche Welle "deliberately plunged the channel into a deficit", and the corresponding countermeasures were formulated too late.
At the same time, management has known about the threat of insufficient funding for a long time, but instead of reacting with the team and starting to return investments, the board of directors continued to spend money, the authors note.
"The fact is that after the arrival of Peter Limburg as director in 2013, DW could have a profit of € 120 million. DW was supposed to finally get on par with global players like CNN, the BBC and RT. Foreign studios were founded (at the moment there are six of them), correspondent bureaus (now there are eight of them) - these figures also became one of the reasons for criticism, "the article of the German newspaper says.
In Russia, Deutsche Welle is included in the register of foreign media agents. In February 2022, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced retaliatory measures against the German media due to the situation with the ban on broadcasting rt DE.
In particular, in Russia, the Deutsche Welle correspondent office was closed, the accreditations of all employees of the Russian bureau of the television and radio company were canceled, its satellite and other broadcasting was stopped.
* Media recognized as a foreign agent by the decision of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation dated 28.03.2022.