Image: APA/ROBERT JAEGER
According to an internal statement, those responsible must refuse secondary employment by employees at chambers, political institutions and party-affiliated interest groups until further notice. All other jobs outside of the ORF should “particularly restrictive” being checked.
Weissmann is thus reacting to cases of moderation that have become known in recent weeks and “were likely to raise public doubts about a lack of independence”, the letter says. According to the research platform, the ORF-Lower Austria regional director Robert Ziegler, who resigned on Friday, should do so “dossier” have moderated events of interest groups close to the ÖVP, such as the Lower Austrian Chamber of Commerce. Nadja Mader (“Lower Austria today”) moderated loudly “butterfly” for the Chamber of Commerce and Raiffeisen, among others. The provisions now introduced by Weißmann apply temporarily until the findings of an ethics committee are available.
Lower Austria: Arrange a successor by June
Weißmann intends to fill the open state director post after Ziegler’s resignation by June at the latest, as he said in the APA interview. In the discussion initiated by Media Minister Susanne Raab (ÖVP) about savings at the ORF, Weißmann referred to savings of twelve percent of the employees in the past decade. At the same time, he pushed for the planned digital amendment, so that the ORF, for example, can only offer content in digital form. In the next eight weeks, a decision must be made as to how ORF customers who only stream will be asked to pay from 2024. This was recently requested by the Constitutional Court.
Source: Nachrichten
