By Gunnar Schupelius
The broadcaster was looking for a cleaner who should drain the swamp in the management floors. But one of the WDR officials came along who is neither impartial nor independent and therefore cannot clean up at all, says Gunnar Schupelius.
Patricia Schlesinger, the ex-director of the RBB, was fired: suspicion of corruption, false accounting and nepotism.
A system of outrageously high salaries throughout the station’s management team came to light, an unforeseen enrichment at the expense of the fee-payers.
So a temporary director was sought who would clean up the shop within a year. Of course, this cleanser would have to come from outside and be particularly independent, everyone agreed.
But things turned out differently. The RBB Broadcasting Council, which was supposed to control Ms. Schlesinger but did not control it, commissioned a search committee to search for her.
This commission found only one candidate, that is Katrin Vernau, the administrative director of Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR). Others were not found. Why not? We didn’t get any information about this.
Ms. Vernau was initially not well received in Berlin. She failed the first election in the Broadcasting Council, was only in zwide approach chosen. It was a choice for lack of an alternative, of course. “What I bring is exactly what RBB needs now,” she said. “I have management experience.”
However, the RBB least needs a director like Katrin Vernau. She has been one of WDR’s top officials for seven years. There she is the right hand of director Tom Buhrow, who with 413,000 euros gross per year still gets 100,000 euros more than Patricia Schlesinger put in his pockets.
Buhrow knew of the system of additional allowances that Schlesinger used to provide for herself and her entourage. He denied this knowledge and said he was “disappointed and angry” at how much money had been paid.
But then he was convicted of a document that proved that he had known since 2018. So Buhrow did not take action against the quagmire he knew. Now he has also taken over the post of ARD chairman from Schlesinger. As such, he hovers over the RBB, where his confidante Vernau is supposed to clean up.
What is that supposed to mean? Is this a joke? Or shouldn’t it be cleaned up at all? Do you just want to smooth things over until we forget the affair?
Katrin Vernau said that at RBB there was “a lifting of the management team from the workforce”. That is certainly true. But she herself also belongs to the raised floor. She is therefore not the right director, she should not have been elected. The fact that she doesn’t understand this is deeply revealing.
The RBB needs an impartial cleaner who comes from outside. If it doesn’t exist, the transmitter is lost.
Is Gunnar Schupelius right? Call: 030/2591 73153 or email: [email protected]