After the incidents at Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) at the Kiel and Hamburg locations, the management wants to review the working atmosphere throughout the station. “I’m convinced that we have to deal more intensively with our corporate culture than we have done so far,” said director Joachim Knuth on Friday at the Broadcasting Council meeting in Hamburg. This can only be done credibly and credibly from the outside with an unbiased view. “It’s about the whole NDR. Where are we standing? Are there structural deficits in which things happen that reinforce a climate that is not conducive to good, productive cooperation,” said the director.
The theologian and manager Stephan Reimers was commissioned with the independent review. His report should be available in late January or early February 2023. “When the report is available, then the work is not done, then it only begins,” said Knuth. The talks by Stephan Reimers and his team are scheduled to begin in early November and would span the entire station. All employees at all locations should be spoken to. The results of the ongoing talks at the Kiel and Hamburg locations are to be included in the final report.
The transmission area of the third largest public broadcaster ARD extends over the federal states of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony.
Weeks ago, media reports raised the question of whether there could have been a kind of filter with a political bias by the superiors in the political reporting at the NDR in Kiel. An internal audit report came to the conclusion that there was no evidence of this, but that there was a bad working atmosphere in Kiel. The results of another external investigation are still pending. Two editorial executives were transferred.
In the Landesfunkhaus Hamburg there had been allegations against the director Sabine Rossbach. Here, too, questions about the working atmosphere came up as the process progressed. According to the results of an NDR internal review, which was presented on Thursday evening, Rossbach did not make any unauthorized interventions in the program, but did not live up to its leadership role. Rossbach had already announced that she would resign from her post on April 1, 2023. After being released, she will finally leave NDR on October 31, 2023, according to the broadcaster.
