The Thuringian SPD media politician Matthias Hey has expressed his outrage at the demand of the CDU factions in Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt to discuss a possible merger of ZDF and ARD. The majority of people trust the journalistic formats of the two broadcasters, Hey told the German Press Agency in Erfurt. Hey cited the news programs of ZDF and ARD as an example. "That is why this proposal - and it must be said so clearly - is also an attack on journalistic freedom in this country."
Legal concerns
At a joint meeting in Stolberg (Harz), the CDU state parliamentary groups from Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt unanimously adopted a position paper in which they called for the abolition of duplicate structures in public broadcasting and an "objective discussion on the merger of ARD and ZDF".
In Hey's opinion, a merger is also not legally possible. "Legally speaking, the two broadcasters are completely different," he said. ARD is a consortium of broadcasters and ZDF has a completely different structure. "Legally speaking - there is a state media treaty - that is not possible at all," he said.
