Following allegations against Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) at the Kiel site, the independent Schleswig-Holstein State Broadcasting Council is launching an investigation. “We, as the sole control body, will carry out this check and, where necessary, call in external expertise. We take the allegations made very seriously,” said Chairwoman Laura Pooth after a special session. The committee members will therefore collect documents and information and hold the necessary discussions.
The case revolves around allegations in connection with the political reporting of the public broadcaster ARD. The online medium “Business Insider” and then “Stern” had reported allegations that there could be a kind of filter by the superiors in the editorial department.
For example, it was about an interview that an NDR journalist wanted to conduct with Hans-Joachim Grote, the former interior minister of Schleswig-Holstein, which his superiors rejected. Political chief Julia Stein has already removed entire quotes from previous reports about Grote, who is said to have had contacts with a questionable police unionist, among other things. “Authors would be deducted and contributions would be massively changed in the acceptances,” is the accusation, among other things. Or even more pointedly: superiors of the NDR would act like “press spokesman of the ministries”.
According to “Stern”, a total of 72 employees of the state broadcasting center in Kiel have now written a fire letter in which they show themselves “severely shaken” and by the behavior distance themselves from their bosses. They also demand “a complete and transparent processing of all allegations.”
The editor-in-chief of the NDR for Schleswig-Holstein, Norbert Lorentzen, said afterwards that the “accusation of political influence on our programs was decisively rejected”. The ARD broadcaster NDR made a similar statement in a statement. “NDR rejects the accusation that there is a “political filter” in the Schleswig-Holstein broadcasting center. Reporting is unbiased and independent.”
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