Dhe speech by WDR Director General Tom Buhrow on the future of public service broadcasting, documented in the FAZ, continues to find a wide echo – in media politics, in the industry, but also far beyond, as Buhrow probably intended.
At a works meeting at his own station last Friday, the director had to listen to heavy criticism for his proposal to convene a round table and negotiate a new social contract for the station. It is not surprising that employees at his station are not enthusiastic about hearing from their boss that he believes that the public will want public service broadcasting in the form in which it is today and not in ten years’ time. The idea, however, that he first sends his basic analysis on its way in-house is somewhat sunny.
Because it’s about the WDR in its WDR quality and the other broadcasters, about their narrowed internal perspective on the system. Taking Buhrow for a culture despiser, as has already been suggested in reactions to his speech at the Übersee-Club in Hamburg, meanwhile falls short and is a misunderstanding: Buhrow addresses culture in an exemplary manner to show how great the forces are who oppose you when you want to change something. How right he is with this is shown in the finest way by some of the statements made about his appeal.
And as far as the speech is concerned, which the specialist service epd medien and in the “waste paper” of the MDR suspect that it did not appear in full in the FAZ: the note “abridged” referred to the deletion of the salutation of the host and the audience in the Übersee-Club, otherwise nothing is missing from Buhrow’s words.
