Austrian Cosa Nostra – POLITICO

The newsroom should be protected from direct interventions, but these still occur often. In one particularly egregious case several years ago, a senior Freedom Party politician called reporters 22 times in one day to complain. (A recent exposé from the Austrian research journal Dossier details the extent of political interference.)

Although the ÖVP is not above such interventions, it prefers the subtler approach of installing its people in key positions of power, whether in an editorship, in an anchor position or in the ‘general director’, the top position of the ORF, is.

Appointing the chief executive every five years is a byzantine process of political horse-trading and alliance-building, akin to selecting the Pope. The current incumbent president, Roland Weißmann, is an ÖVP man.

The night I showed up I am ZentrumI was accompanied by the editor of the Viennese daily, Der Kuriera print extension of the People’s Party, as well as the Secretaries General of the Social Democrats and the ÖVP.

As a lifelong student of Austrian politics, I was afraid that the discussion would devolve into a kind of he-said-she-said between the representatives of the two parties, as often happens in such programs. I decided to go in to break the mold.

In recent years I have written extensively about the corruption within the ÖVP and the unrest that engulfed its former Sun King, Sebastian Kurz. While political corruption in Austria is by no means the exclusive domain of the ÖVP, I found the extent to which the party has entrenched itself in every aspect of Austrian society disturbing.