Cologne (dpa / lnw) – Ex-Federal Minister of the Interior and FDP politician Gerhart Baum has criticized the proposals from his party to reform public broadcasting. These amounted to a “tabula rasa reform” that “also comes up against constitutional limits,” Baum told the “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger” (Monday edition).
The FDP is making things too easy for itself, the incumbent WDR broadcasting council complained: “Reforming public service broadcasting is tedious work that has to be done. Simple solutions are an illusion.”
In the past week, the FDP had used two position papers for a cost-cutting reform of the public broadcasters. One comes from the parliamentary group, the other from the NRW state parliamentary group. What they have in common are central demands such as the merger of broadcasters (including ARD and ZDF), upper salary limits for top earners and the thinning out of the entertainment offering.
Baum said that, according to a ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court, entertainment is expressly part of the broadcasting mandate, so the required focus on education and information cannot be enforced. “The proposals have an unthought-out radicality, nobody considers what would be lost if ARD and ZDF merged.”
Baum demanded that the broadcasting bodies have to carry out their supervisory duties much more confidently. They would play a key role in the reform of public service broadcasting and should not leave the reforms to the directors.
