So far, if Joachim Knuth wants to go on a business trip, he only has to ask one person for approval: himself. Because as director of NDR, he also signs off on his own expenses. This is according to the broadcaster’s regulations. No four-eyes principle. No external plan view. No questions as to whether the trip and the associated costs are really necessary. The lack of control is widespread in ARD.
At five of the nine broadcasters in the ARD network and at ZDF, the heads of the broadcasters either do not have to have anyone approve their business trips and personal expenses or – purely formally – they have to approve them themselves. This was announced by the individual broadcasters at the request of WELT AM SONNTAG. Some, including NDR, announced that this practice should be abolished.
The Saarländisches Rundfunk announced that the director had submitted travel applications, but that there were no approval procedures. The director is only obliged to report annually to the board of directors on billed hospitality. At Südwestrundfunk, too, the director has so far approved and billed his business trips himself. When asked, the broadcaster said that this would be changed. Likewise Radio Bremen.
At the scandal-ridden RBB, a lack of control was standard for years. The rule there was that the director approved expenses herself. Employees, on the other hand, had to have their bosses approve expenses. Now it says: This was a “deficiency” that will be remedied. The NDR, also at the center of the revelations, is hurrying to improve: In the future, an “approval requirement” for directors will be anchored in the travel expenses regulation.
There are institutions where this is already the case: At Westdeutscher Rundfunk, the legal advisor and deputy director checks and approves the director’s expenses. At Bayerischer Rundfunk, too, expenditure is subject to the four-eyes principle. Deutschlandfunk has invoices checked and approved by an external service provider. There could be similar regulations across ARD in the future.
BR director Katja Wildermuth speaks of “unique events at RBB”. A statement that Kayhan Özgenc, editor-in-chief of “Business Insider” finds “very courageous” at this point in time. He would also receive information about other ARD stations.
Source: WELT / Tatjana Ohm
Lax or non-existent control of top management is more the rule than the exception in public service broadcasting (ÖRR). In terms of their internal condition, many institutions appear to have fallen out of time. A report that the examiner Monika Wulf-Mathies, commissioned by the WDR, presented back in 2018 gives an idea of the dimensions of the problems at the second largest broadcaster in Europe with 4,300 employees.
After an extensive employee survey, Wulf-Mathies attested to the Cologne broadcaster, among other things, the “development of a life of its own in the directorates” and the “isolation and consolidation of hierarchical structures”. Employees complained about a “less respectful working atmosphere”, “cliques” and “hereditary farms” that “promote a one-sided selection of personnel”. Director then as now: ARD boss Tom Buhrow.
The massive problems with the public broadcasters draw attention to the supervisory bodies. The Ingolstadt media scientist Prof. Klaus Meier sees the faults in the system as justified: “The work and the structures of the broadcasting and administrative boards urgently need to be professionalised. They work on a voluntary basis, are not experts and therefore need the right and a budget with which they can commission reports and studies, for example program analyzes or audience surveys see rather as representatives of the interests of the respective associations and organizations” instead of as controllers in the sense of the contributors.
The fact is: unlike in public limited companies, there is often hardly any effective control of the director-led broadcasters in public broadcasters. At the request of WELT AM SONNTAG, the NDR committee office stated that neither the broadcasting council nor the board of directors had completely or partially rejected an application from the management in the past five years, and the same applies to Deutsche Welle.
Other broadcasters were evasive or said they didn’t keep statistics on rejections (such as MDR, SWR, RBB and SR). After all: At the WDR, the committees demanded improvements in some cases and stopped a commissioned production in the case of the planned multi-part series “Siegfried and Roy”.
Meier considers a major reform of ÖRR and committees to be overdue. That is a matter for politics: “The parliaments of the federal states could change the broadcasting laws and the broadcasting treaties.” But little was heard about this: “It could be because the parties think they are benefiting from the current system because they believe they will benefit from it Being able to influence the program content.”
