It should now be very tight for the director of the NDR state broadcasting house in Hamburg Sabine Rossbach, who is under pressure after reports of nepotism and controversial interventions in the program.
Numerous NDR employees are now writing a letter to NDR Director General Joachim Knuth and are indirectly demanding a new start in terms of personnel. “We can no longer imagine a trusting cooperation with Sabine Rossbach,” it says (below in the original or here).
First, “Zapp”, the media magazine of the NDR, made the process public, 70 employees of the Landesfunkhaus Hamburg had signed the letter.
The allegations of nepotism are considered “serious”, the letter continues. Business Insider” (like WELT belongs to Axel Springer) was the first to report that the older daughter of Sabine Rossbach, as the owner of a PR agency, was able to place her customers in NDR programs for years. The signatories to the NDR letter are now accusing the editors of not being free in their decision on this and other controversial program contributions – in other words, to reject them in case of doubt. Rossbach, for example, had forwarded the PR agency’s topic offers to the editors with the comments “We should have” and “With the request for reporting”.
“At no point did I ask editors to decide against journalistic standards,” Rossbach replied to the initial allegations. If the editorial team got the impression that their daughter’s customers should be given preferential treatment, they regret it.
There are other articles that were published at Rossbach’s request, without the editors considering this to be justified, the letter says. Many NDR colleagues would have credibly assured this.
Another daughter of the director had landed a coveted permanent position at the station, although other candidates, internal sources say, were more qualified. The husband of the head of the radio station, Dieter Petereit, has been working as a “music consultant” for the regional wave Lower Saxony since 2018, receiving up to 50,000 euros a year – although the wave already has a music boss.
The letter paints a picture of a shattered working atmosphere. “There was hardly any constructive criticism or discussion at eye level. Many of us have experienced this as a climate of fear,” the signatories write. One asks for a quick decision from the director “in the sense of the NDR”. One thing is clear: “We need a new corporate and management culture overall.”
The State Broadcasting Council, the control body of the public broadcaster, wants to deal with the allegations at an extraordinary meeting on September 14th.