Five days before the election of a new parliament in Magdeburg, the media policy spokesman for the East German parliamentary group of the Left spoke up with demands on media policy and, in particular, on a reform of public broadcasting with a view to East Germany.
In a joint paper entitled “A sandman alone doesn’t make a summer”, André Blechschmidt from Thuringia, Antje Feiks from Saxony and Stefan Gebhardt from Saxony-Anhalt call for a new financial equalization within ARD, among other things. In addition to the previous funds, the three ARD broadcasters MDR, NDR and RBB, which are active in the eastern German states, are to receive one percent of the premium income. Converted, it is about 80 million euros, which should flow into East German programs, is the demand of the left.
Among other things, due to dissatisfaction with the position of the three East German ARD broadcasters, the CDU in Saxony-Anhalt prevented the radio fee from increasing by 86 cents to 18.36 euros from the beginning of the year in December 2020. It would have been the first increase in the contribution since 2009. The appeal to the Federal Constitutional Court could not change that.
Only one artistic director and two program directors from the east
In addition, the media politicians of the Left are calling for “people from Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania to have more leadership and program responsibility outside of RBB and MDR”. Of the twelve channels on ARD, ZDF, Deutschlandradio and Deutsche Welle, there is currently only one director of East German origin. Only two of the total of 21 program directors come from East Germany, the paper explains.
The left-wing politicians also note a disproportion in the joint tasks and joint broadcasts of ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio. With Kika and the ARD Playout Center, only two of a total of 50 community facilities have a seat in the five new federal states. Nothing has changed under the aegis of the current ARD chairman Tom Buhrow, since the digital culture platform of the ARD in Halle an der Saale has so far only been a bargaining chip. Here, more equity must be created in the use of contributions.
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In principle, the East German media politicians of the left – unlike the AfD – defend public broadcasting “as a democratically founded, publicly financed and market-independent basic supply of news and other media content”.
Like the CDU in Saxony-Anhalt, the Left is now pointing out that in the perception of the people in East Germany, the media are directed from West Germany. This applies both to the private newspaper publisher from Hamburg or Cologne and to the “replica West at the MDR or the RBB”. “In the case of the public broadcasters, it is aggravating that the East German contribution payers also finance the ‘remote control’ themselves in their eyes.”
