The former RBB director Patricia Schlesinger has been named the “most embarrassing Berliner 2022” by the city magazine “Tip”. The city magazine justified the choice with the fact that the 61-year-old journalist stands for “one of the biggest crises in the public service system”. “Tip Berlin” has been honoring the “100 most embarrassing Berliners” of the year for more than 20 years.
The city magazine itself calls the ranking a “shame list” and an “annual satirical, cheerfully serious, screamingly unfair review of the year”. In 2021, the actor Volker Bruch was voted the “most embarrassing Berliner”, the year before that the vegan chef and conspiracy ideologist Attila Hildmann. This year’s “prize winner” Schlesinger was subtitled by “Tip” with the term “Systemsprengerin”.
“When the fish stinks from the head, it stinks at the RBB in the Masurenallee like on a worm-eaten ocean-going cutter after a ten-week fishing trip,” writes the magazine. The business magazine “Business Insider” (which, like WELT, belongs to the Axel Springer publishing house) has revealed allegations against the director, which “are about felt, nepotism, a lavish bonus salary system, a damn expensive conversion of their 13th day of service, at least questionable consulting contracts for her husband, lavish dinners with political influencers at the broadcaster’s expense in the private apartment and crazy discounts for her company limousine.
“If you initially thought you were the focus of a nasty Springer campaign at RBB with a Wagenburg mentality,” it goes on, the RBB evening show later learned that research in-house could also be part of the program assignment.
Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB) was in a massive crisis in the summer as a result of the affair surrounding the then director Schlesinger and the chairman of the board of directors, Wolf-Dieter Wolf. Schlesinger, who was dismissed without notice at the end of August, was accused of nepotism and waste, among other things.
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