After the revelations about the self-service mentality in the executive floors of some public broadcasters, criticism rained down. Minister of State for Culture Roth agrees. She calls for reforms, above all more transparency and control. And then there are the high director salaries.
Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth has called for reforms from the public broadcasters and questioned the high salaries of directors. “There is absolutely no understanding for their annual salaries of sometimes more than 400,000 euros,” Roth told the “Augsburger Allgemeine”. If a director earns more than the chancellor, “there is an imbalance,” continued the Green politician.
In the newspaper, Roth confirmed that public service broadcasting had a “considerable need for reform”. “More transparency and more effective control of salaries at management levels and when awarding contracts” are necessary.
As a consequence of the scandals surrounding Patricia Schlesinger, the former director of Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg, because of allegations of waste, “everything must now be done to restore the damaged credibility of public broadcasting – and that the impression that the boardrooms of the Broadcasters have a self-service mentality, which is counteracted decisively with more transparency and effective controls,” explained the Minister of State.
The next discussion about the amount of the license fee will be “a difficult debate,” Roth told the newspaper. “But our democracy – and ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio are among its pillars – should be worth something to us.”
The debate about reforms in public service broadcasting picked up speed after the scandal surrounding Patricia Schlesinger, the former director of broadcasting in Berlin-Brandenburg. Schlesinger initially resigned in August after a series of allegations and was then fired without notice. She is accused, among other things, of wasteful use of fee money.
