“Deceptive package”: Further criticism of the ORF website

ORF.at was a major bone of contention in the negotiations on the new ORF law. The publishers found the news site too “newspaper-like” and the number of text messages was now limited to 350 per week. Pure titles that directly lead to subpages of ORF.at via a link are not covered by the limitation, which makes the publishers’ association VÖZ speak of “a deception” with regard to the ORF law. The ORF firmly rejected this accusation.

Several headlines on ORF.at have an icon at the end of the line. If you click on these lines, you will automatically be taken to the various federal state subpages such as wien.ORF.at, the “yellow page” sport.ORF.at or science.ORF.at, religion.ORF.at and topos.ORF. at led. These subpages are not new. In the past, the portal links were journalistically prepared by the news.ORF.at editorial team and provided with a short text before they were redirected to the various subpages. “This is no longer the case. Therefore, in the interests of user-friendliness, an icon now indicates that you are switching to another offer,” said the ORF.

30 percent text posts

What can be found on these subpages according to ORF law varies. On sport.ORF.at, as on the ORF.at home and overview page, a quota of 30 percent text and 70 percent audiovisual contributions has recently been applied. In contrast to ORF.at, there is no upper limit on the sports site. Other subpages such as science.ORF.at or topos.ORF.at were not limited either. The case is different for the nine subpages of the federal states. A limit of 80 reports per federal state per week has been in effect since 2010.

“Lack of effectiveness of the provisions”

Gerald Grünberger, managing director of the Association of Austrian Newspapers (VÖZ), said that the “newspaper similarity” of the digital offering ORF.at, which has been legally prohibited since 2010, still exists. The ORF law is a “sham package” because it allows the mixing of overview reporting and other ORF online orders on the “blue page” and enables more than 350 text messages per week, as the VÖZ also noted to the daily newspaper “Die Presse”.

“Here, however, KommAustria (note: media authority) will probably still have to deal with whether the law actually allows this,” said the VÖZ managing director. According to Grünberger, the publishers’ association already pointed out a “lack of effectiveness of the provisions” during the legislative process and continues to advocate for “much more comprehensive restrictions”.

The VÖZ lodged a complaint with the European Competition Authority several months ago about the new ORF law. With regard to fee financing, the association sees a change in aid that requires notification and which the EU Commission should reassess.

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