I took my first trip to DR Aarhus today to interview Dianna Bach. Dianna started working for DR straight out of journalism school ten years ago, first in Aalborg and now in Aarhus. After starting as a reporter, she now presents a morning show (6am - 10am) on the regional radio network, with an estimated listenership of 90,000. She’s been a workplace representative for the Danish Journalists’ Association for a year and a half, and has thus has had to deal with a wide-ranging re-organisation of DR, and a round of redundancies this year. The previous representative had served for two years; Dianna thought that might have been not long enough, since she’d picked up so much knowledge that it would be difficult to pass on.
She said that around half of the 25 journalists she represented were DR-”lifers”, but that it was likely to change from now on. Pay was not significantly higher outside of DR, although TV2 could afford to pay a little bit more. Despite the reorganisation and the redundancies, morale was still high, although there was some hesitation when I asked whether people were still proud to work for DR.
Like others I’ve interviewed, Dianna was aware of the longterm consequences of politicians’ complaints - of anticipating their reactions and opting for a quiet life - but argued that 90% - 100% of her colleagues would agree that DR was independent of political interests. As far as political criticism was concerned, most of the criticism they got tended to come from the right: she cited one example of a DF supporter who believed that party leaders had been treated in a mocking style.
One thing that did emerge was the genuine irritation of journalists at board members who weigh in on specific programmes (this is also something I’ve come across in analysing parliamentary questions on DR). The specific example given was Ole Hyltoft’s call for P3 - the youth network - to broadcast more traditional songs (gamle schlager), which led to him being ticked off by the DG. Maybe the off-hand comments of board members are driving people’s perceptions of DR’s internal politics- “if the board is like this, what must the journalists be like?”-style thinking.
The morning started off with a news-story that complaints to DR had risen; but Dianna admitted that most of the complaints passed to her could be resolved quickly with an email, without registering the complaint formally. Hopefully I’ll find more about the complaints process if I succeed in meeting DR’s Listeners’ and Viewers’ Editor.
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