Comment: Why don't the license fee payers know what the RBB's yellow-haired embarrassment is costing them?
Green Party member Stefan Gelbhaar and RBB have reached an out-of-court settlement. They have agreed to keep the amount confidential. It is the inglorious conclusion to a catastrophic failure.
One of Germany's biggest media scandals has now reached a temporary conclusion: the Stefan Gelbhaar case. After the Green Party politician sued RBB for damages due to defamatory reporting, the broadcaster announced this week that it had reached an out-of-court settlement with Gelbhaar . The two parties have agreed to keep the amount of compensation confidential. Gelbhaar had previously demanded approximately 1.7 million euros.
The fact that the broadcaster, after all these embarrassments, hasn't disclosed the cost to license fee payers of its internal errors is a small scandal in itself. It's the latest aspect in an unprecedented chain of journalistic and corporate failures.
At the end of December, the broadcaster published a report in which several women made allegations of harassment against Gelbhaar . As it later turned out, some of the allegations were fabricated. Not only that: one of the witnesses, a woman named Anne K., didn't even exist. RBB was forced to retract its report.
It is now considered likely that the allegations were the result of an internal party conspiracy. An internal investigation by the Green Party in June suggests that members of the Green Youth group deliberately targeted Gelbhaar. At the same time, there are still statements from women complaining about Gelbhaar's inappropriate behavior. However, this does not constitute criminal sexual harassment, as RBB reported in December.
The consequences were devastating – for everyone involved. Most notably, for Gelbhaar himself, who withdrew his candidacy for a place on the party's list for the federal election and also lost his bid for the direct mandate in Berlin-Pankow. Habeck confidant Andreas Audretsch won second place on the state list in his place. And the young East German Julia Schneider was elected to the Bundestag for the constituency. Until then, Gelbhaar had been the only Green to ever win an East German constituency. Now his political career was in tatters.
The RBB has a tradition of paying horrendous legal feesThe damage was also enormous for RBB: The case meant a massive loss of trust. Instead of providing a transparent investigation, the broadcaster first commissioned the auditing firm Deloitte – for 60,000 euros. Their investigation largely confirmed what other media outlets had long since researched. Why RBB was unable to do so itself remains a mystery to this day.
Ultimately, there were hardly any consequences. The then editor-in-chief, David Biesinger, defended himself for months, claiming he bore no responsibility. In the end, he had to leave, but was merely relegated to the back seat. Today, he heads the Program Resources Department. There, he helps decide which positions will be eliminated as part of the wave of cuts. While hundreds of journalists fear for their jobs , his future is secure. What a mockery.
RBB is heavily in debt. And it has a remarkable tradition of spending exorbitant sums on legal disputes. Perhaps the two are related. In the Patricia Schlesinger case alone, the broadcaster reportedly paid several million euros in legal fees. It's quite possible that Stefan Gelbhaar's compensation is also close to the million mark. Unfortunately, we, who pay for it with our broadcasting fees, aren't allowed to know exactly how close.
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Berliner-zeitung
