The editorial board (SJD) of the French-speaking public broadcaster RTBF has lost its confidence in the management, according to a vote on Wednesday. The general meeting, extended to include all news professions, has unanimously (with four abstentions) pronounced on “the need to immediately start a procedure to carry out an audit of the functioning of RTBF”. The editorial board reports this in a letter to the management.
Nevertheless, several members of the meeting were of the opinion that confidence could be restored if the organization of the editorial work could be really improved.
The management of RTBF confirmed to the Belga press agency “its willingness to enter into dialogue, because that is the only way to make progress and to take the necessary measures quickly to tackle the problems in the organization of work”. These measures should benefit the “collective and individual well-being, of all services”, say Jean-Paul Philippot, director general of RTBF, and members of the executive committee.
It is the second crisis meeting of the editorial board since the suicide of journalist Alain Dremière in February. His death sparked debate about working conditions and management practices in the media. The editorial board states that it “has been sounding the alarm for years about the malaise in the editorial board”, without results.
The trade unions, in turn, asked Culture and Media Minister Bénédicte Linard on Thursday for an external audit into the functioning of the public company.
Anyone with questions about suicide can surf to www.zelfmoord1813.be or call 1813.
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