Journalist and presenter Linda Zervakis accused Minister of State for Culture Wolfram Weimer (independent) of wanting to provoke a debate over public broadcasting. Zervakis specifically referred to the words “mandatory fees.”
Whoever chose this word wanted to provoke, he told “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung”. Zervakis, who works for ProSieben and makes a podcast at the capital’s studio ARD, literally said: “Whoever chose the words ‘mandatory fees’ wanted to provoke. That’s legal, I just don’t know if it fits the role of a Minister of State for Culture.”
In principle, public broadcasting funding can and should be discussed. “But please be based on facts, not on annoying words,” Zervakis said.
Are “Joko and Klaas” getting bolder to appear on public broadcasters?
When speaking to the audience, the journalist who moved from “Tagesschau” to ProSieben recommended that ARD and ZDF be bolder: “Joko, Klaas and Heidi Klum know how to entertain people – and that is nothing for public broadcasters to be ashamed of. The dual broadcasting system is a great achievement. In the best case, private and public broadcasting complement each other,” said Zervakis.
“What we see again and again with Joko and Klaas is that attitude and lightness do not have to be mutually exclusive. If Joko and Klaas succeed in making people think who actually just want to switch off for a moment, then they are both doing something right. You can be inspired by that,” he continued in an interview with “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung”.
The mother of two was also asked about the military conscription debate. He later admitted his ambivalent feelings: “The thought that my son would one day have to defend our country with a weapon in his hand was difficult for me to bear. But I also thought: What would happen if war broke out in our country? Who would protect us if no one else was willing to take responsibility? Discussion of conscription, whether voluntary or not, was inevitable in the current situation.”
Zervakis: Today’s most vulnerable people are increasingly disadvantaged in schools
The interview also discussed the state of schools in Germany. Here Zervakis, the daughter of Greek immigrants, sees developments for the worse, but only impacting the weakest groups: “My assessment is that school education in Germany has basically not decreased in quality in recent decades, but unfortunately socially weaker areas have also suffered,” says Zervakis.
And further: “One of the reasons is that it is difficult for them to follow the integration of students who do not yet speak German or speak German poorly: the children taught in focus schools are children who, in my opinion, actually enjoy a much worse school education today than children of my generation in general.”
On Monday, Zervakis will also tackle the topic of schools in the latest edition of his show on ProSieben. For “Linda Zervakis. Stupid, stupid Germany? Get out of the education crisis!” The journalist traveled, among other things, to the Pisa study competition in Singapore, where, according to the program’s advertising, “it is not unusual to spend 4,000 euros a month on tutoring for children”. In Estonia, Zervakis met a teacher who had emigrated from Germany, and in Germany he visited two so-called “focus schools”: the newly designed Rütli School in Berlin and the Alemannic School in Baden-Württemberg.
