Brender has to leave ZDF
The commissioning editor of the ZDF (one of the two most important public TV stations in Germany), Nikolaus Brender, has to leave the TV station. The would have needed 9 of 14 votes, but only received 7. Why is this so important, people are losing their jobs all the time?
The problem in this case is that Brender was neutral and often criticized leading politicians for their work. The current situation in the administrative board is as follows: There are more CDU politicians than SPD politicians and some CDU politicians were against Brender.
There's now the discussion arising if Brender was kicked, because he was disturbing the politicians. 35 political scientists have already written an open against the decision and the Greens want to submit the case to the Federal Constitutional Court. Some people are already comparing the German situation with Italy where Berlusconi has control over many TV stations. There's also a satire logo on twitter expressing that the TV station was ruled by the CDU (cf. on the right).
It sounded a bit like an excuse when Roland Koch, one of the CDU politicians, said today that he had only voted against Brender to "bring new ideas to the station apart from political discussions". The official explanation was that the viewer levels of the evening news were too bad, but I read that this assertion was even a lie.
Friday, November 27, 2009
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