2023-05-03 18:13:53
Newspapers in Austria protest against ORF
White front pages as a protest against the ORF
Source: dpa
In Austria, newspaper publishers are protesting against the public ORF. A planned household levy will increase income, and a digital amendment is intended to expand ORF’s scope on the Internet. Publishers fear the end of media diversity.
AMay 3rd is Press Freedom Day. On this day, reference is usually made to the countries in which freedom of the press is restricted, for example by governments. Germany slipped back to 21st place in the ranking of countries with the greatest freedom of the press – this was also due to the increasing number of attacks on journalists last year, for example on the sidelines of demonstrations.
What is unusual, however, is the attack on freedom of the press, which Austrian newspapers denounce. In protest against the public service broadcaster ORF, the daily newspapers left their front pages mostly blank today. Only the respective headline was then visible, for example from “Standard”, “Kronen-Zeitung”, “Presse”, “Salzburger Nachrichten” and “Kleine Zeitung”.
The articles justifying this see an “outcry from the editors”, criticize a “regulatory killing spree” or see a “gravedigger of media diversity” at work. An open letter from the publishers’ association states that the newspapers are “cut off from any future development opportunities”.
Why is? The editor-in-chief of the “Standard” in Vienna, Martin Kotynek, describes the reason for the protest in detail. Accordingly, the publishers fear that a planned ORF reform will destroy media diversity in the country. Kotynek believes that the long-planned digital amendment, which already gives the ORF a lot of freedom for its online offering, will worsen the market distortion in favor of contribution-financed television.
Kotynek writes: “For ORF.at (the internet news page of the ORF, d. editor.) broadcasting was granted more rights years ago than ARD and ZDF are permitted in Germany. And now this slippery slope, which in its market design makes independent, critical journalism beyond the ORF as difficult as possible, is tipping even further: the digital amendment is intended to give online broadcasting even more opportunities.”
“More Equal Opportunities”
Overall, writes the “Standard” editor-in-chief, the ORF “makes as much turnover as all private newspaper publishers put together”. The ORF’s income from the planned budget levy is estimated at 710 million euros a year. That cannot go well, says Kotynek, who calls for “more equal opportunities” in journalistic competition. The government made up of the conservative ÖVP and the Greens must ask itself the following questions: “For which public-law tasks does the company want to finance the ORF? How can everyone participate fairly in this market?”
These are also questions that German media politicians have to ask themselves in relation to ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio, the public broadcasters have just announced their (increasing) financial needs. In Germany, too, daily newspapers are finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with the contribution-financed broadcasters on the economic side in the journalistic competition. On the one hand, the print editions of newspapers are at risk due to high distribution costs and rising paper and energy costs. On the other hand, the broadcasters’ online offers with a high text content compete with privately financed media offers.
According to the editors-in-chief of the Austrian newspapers, the government must revise the digital amendment in order to prevent the newspaper from dying out. When the household levy comes (which has existed in Germany since 2013), the individual ORF contribution will drop from currently around 22.45 euros a month to 15.30 euros. The income from the contribution is still expected to increase, according to the old tax model, around 670 million euros will be collected.
Incidentally, Austria is ranked 29th in the press freedom rankings of “Reporters Without Borders”.
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