Reform of ARD and ZDF: “Everything can’t stay the way it is”

GErhart Baum, former Federal Minister of the Interior, and Jürgen Bremer, media lawyer and journalist, call for a reform of the supervisory bodies of public broadcasting in an appeal using the WDR as an example. According to the two authors, not only the crisis surrounding the RBB revealed that the self-image and working methods of the broadcasting and administrative boards had to change.

Baum, a member of the WDR Broadcasting Council, and Bremer, who was a member of the Broadcasting Council until last year, state that there are deficits in supervision that urgently need to be eliminated. These shortcomings are all the more problematic as the future State Treaty on Media transfers even more responsibility to the broadcasting and administrative boards than before. According to the two lawyers, programs, their development and costs will be the responsibility of the broadcasting bodies in the future. With new competencies, the broadcasting and administrative boards are gaining new power, but also new responsibility. That’s why not everything can stay as it is. At the ARD level, there is a structural deficit that has been tolerated up to now. This must be overcome in order to be able to counter attacks on the raison d’être of public service broadcasting.