WDR director Tom Buhrow has defended the new “Hard but fair” moderator Louis Klamroth against criticism. “We are not interested in who our program protagonists share table and bed with,” said Buhrow at a meeting of the WDR Broadcasting Council on Tuesday in Cologne.
The only interesting thing is whether the people concerned meet professional standards. This is clearly the case with Klamroth, said the director, referring to the recent “Hard, but fair” program on the climate debate on Monday.
Klamroth has a relationship with the activist Luisa Neubauer. TV director Jörg Schönenborn explained at the meeting that there had been an intensive selection process in the spring and early summer of last year when looking for a successor to the long-standing “Hart aber fair” presenter Frank Plasberg. At the end of August, Klamroth approached WDR and informed him about his relationship with Luisa Neubauer – after the decision for Klamroth had already been announced in mid-August. Contract talks with him were concluded at the end of the year.
Klamroth announced his relationship in an interview about a month before his first show as moderator of “Hart, aber fair”. For reasons of transparency, it was important to Klamroth himself to make his previously unknown relationship public, said Schönenborn.