AK Zwo, November 3, 1989: Reading of the declaration of the leadership circle of the SED

OBJECT INFORMATION

Info

November 3 1989
Duration: 02:31 min.
Broadcaster: Deutscher Fernsehfunk (DFF) - DRA

License: Not Creative Commons

“Wolfgang Lippe reads the declaration of the leadership circle of the SED of DDR-Fernsehen (GDR Television) concerning the future work of television to win back the trust of the citizens: ‘We acknowledge with great dismay our shared responsibility for the crisis situation that has emerged in the GDR. We have allowed our medium to be abused by dirigiste interventions. This has shaken the trust of many viewers and not least of numerous employees of DDR-Fernsehen. We apologize to the citizens of the GDR for that. Overcoming this loss of trust will be laborious and hard. We are committed to it. It will force us to examining unsparingly the state of our work and its results, the shows on both our programs. The goal is to lead the public dialogue on television screens. Now and in the future, all journalists and artists, all employees in our medium, and especially all members of the SED will assess based on a public dialogue how GDR television can bring the ideas, criticisms, and proposals of millions of politically responsible citizens who stand on the constitutional principles of our state into the social process of opinion, education, and work. We see this as one crucial guarantee to make the process of change in our country that has begun irreversible. In that spirit, we are taking an active role in working out and discussing a law on the media. It necessitates that politicians, journalists, artists, and artisans take a lot of responsibility themselves. Responsibilities are to be determined and to be genuinely fulfilled. The management circle of SED television of the GDR instructed the chairman of the State Committee for Television to speak at the tenth conference of the central committee of the SED on the concept of change at DDR-Fernsehen and how it can be achieved by accepting completely responsibility ourselves.’” (Source: DRA)