Austria's newspapers protest against ORF with white front pages

In Austria, most daily newspapers with a white front page appeared on Wednesday. This was an expression of the protest against a law presented by the government, which allows the public broadcaster ORF higher revenues and more leeway for digital offerings.

"Take the air to breathe"

Stephan Löwenstein

Political correspondent based in Vienna.

• Follow I follow

"This further intensifies the distortion of competition and almost takes the air out of the private media of publishing origin," says the president of the Association of Austrian Newspapers (VÖZ), Markus Mair, head of the Styria publishing house. "Our newspapers and magazines – whether print or digital – are one of the cornerstones of our democracy and guarantee pluralism of opinion in our country through their diversity." Media Minister Susanne Raab, on the other hand, said on the occasion of Press Freedom Day that the new ORF law would secure the public service mandate, "which will significantly modernise and rejuvenate the programme and the digital design options".

The main point of criticism is the digital amendment, which the ORF has been calling for years. Until now, the broadcaster has not been allowed to offer content on its platforms that can only be accessed there or can be accessed first ("online-only" and "online-first"). According to the draft law, which the ÖVP-Green government has introduced in the National Council and is available for review until 25 May, this should be possible in the future. The "blue page" of the ORF is already the most visited Austrian news site on the Internet.

50 new text posts per day

As a concession to the private providers, the government and ORF had presented it that there were still formal restrictions. For example, there should be no more than 350 text posts per week on orf.at. The ratio of moving images to text is also set at 70 to 30. However, the publishers point out that 50 text contributions per day is no less than usual on the news side of private providers. In contrast to these, the ORF does not put the texts behind a paywall, it is financed by the contributions.

The financing of the ORF will be placed on a much broader basis. According to the Austria Press Agency, 525,000 additional private households will be liable to pay contributions as a result of the changeover from the fee tied to television and radio to the household levy. In the future, 3.7 million households will pay the fee. The fee for individual households will drop from the current minimum of 22.45 euros to 15.30 euros (in some federal states, state taxes are added). In addition, there are 238,000 companies subject to contributions, 100,000 more than before. The amount of the contribution for companies is staggered according to the sum of the wages paid, one-person companies are excluded.

The Christian Democratic ÖVP and the Greens have defended the changes. This necessitated a ruling by the Constitutional Court. He had declared it unconstitutional that online users would not be used to finance the ORF. The government had rejected alternatives to the budget levy early on because they would have been very costly or would have increased political influence. In principle, most opposition forces agree with this, with the exception of the right-wing FPÖ, which is waging a sharp campaign against the new "ORF tax".

Broader is the criticism of the expansion of the scope for the ORF. In particular, the liberal party Neos supports the resistance of the publishers. All newspapers in the VÖZ printed an open letter to Chancellor Karl Nehammer (ÖVP) on the occasion of Press Freedom Day. He formulates the concerns and calls for a revision of the draft. It is important to counteract an "imminent monopoly of opinion". In the future, ORF will receive at least 710 million euros, 40 million more than before, and will expand digitally: "This is good for ORF. And bad for media pluralism."

ORF boss Roland Weißmann had previously countered that the increase in funding for the station had been lower than inflation for decades. Should more money be collected through the new levy, it would flow into a blocked account. The ORF will not live in the "land of milk and honey", he said in an interview with the F.A.Z.

Reference is also made to new obligations to cooperate with private media. The ORF is to make a selection of its programmes – more than seven years old, 500 minutes per year – available to private individuals. Conversely, private broadcasters can play content on the ORF online platform for a reimbursement of costs. For the ORF media library, the previous restriction to delete content after seven days will be significantly extended. For the ORF news site, the – vague – restriction applies that it may not be "comparable to the online offer of daily or weekly newspapers or monthly magazines". This is not enough for the newspapers.