The “Kurz System” worked well for years – not least because many media “maintain close proximity to politics”, says Florian Klenk, editor-in-chief of the weekly newspaper “Falter”. The journalist brought the case to the public and with the star talked about.
“Falter” editor-in-chief Florian Klenk describes the advertising affair with which the charismatic and current former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz plunged his country into a government crisis as an “unprecedented criminal case”. The paper was one of the first to report on the case. It’s about embellished surveys that should help the then Foreign Minister Kurz in 2017 to make his way to the top of the Austrian People’s Party and to the Chancellery. But the corruption affair is not a purely political scandal. The media is also partly to blame. Florian Klenk has with the star talked about the “System Kurz” and the role of the press.
Mr. Klenk, Austria is known for its “Freunderlwirtschaft”. Why does this also work with the media?
There are many tabloid media in Austria that are closely related to politics. This system helps each other. Politicians provide the newspapers with advertisements and reports, as they say here in Vienna. There was benevolent reporting for this. The new thing about Sebastian Kurz and the ÖVP is that this positive reporting was presumably bought with taxpayers’ money.
Would the case be only half as problematic with party donations or privately financed?
This is a problem for the media because they lose their credibility. But that would not be a criminal offense. The fudged surveys are said to have been financed with tax revenues and distributed via the media. The public prosecutor’s office regards the fact that Wolfgang Fellner from “Austria” bribed top officials and confidants of Kurz with positive reports in order to get advertisements as a criminal offense.
In Germany one reads again and again about the “System Kurz”. What’s it all about?
Sebastian Kurz is a perfect showman, a smart, outwardly polite and well-mannered politician. In the background, however, he has eliminated every contradiction in his own party over the past ten years. If that didn’t work, he publicly discredited the criticism. The result: He has gathered a lot of yes-men around him, in the chats they are called “the controllable ones”.
The second step in this “System Kurz” was to get the media on his side. He granted advertisements to those who reported positively about the policy, and removed them to everyone else.
And in the third step, Kurz tried to weaken public control authorities, for example by attacking the Economic and Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (WKStA) and calling them “left network” and “red cells”. He and his party friends have also reported individual prosecutors for alleged abuse of office. The parliamentary control body was also repeatedly ridiculed and experts who expressed themselves critical of the government’s work were threatened with the withdrawal of funding.
And yet Kurz was able to deceive the media public in such a way?
It is not the first time that Austria has been ensnared by a young, dashing politician. Meanwhile there is the term “feschism”, the appearance is defined as a political program. Austria is particularly susceptible to this. That worries me. As State Secretary and later Foreign Minister, Kurz played a liberal spirit of reform. That fascinated many. By filling his political environment with under 30-year-old boys from the young ÖVP and coming across as very eloquent and authoritative, he deceived the public into a pseudo-reality.
Was that the case before he became chancellor?
The chancellorship went to his head a little. I think that office ultimately led him to abuse his position. We at “Falter” have never described him as an arrogant snob. But people are only now figuring it out. I had my first “Sebastian Kurz-Moment” when he had a renowned Islamic scholar doing research on Muslim kindergartens. At that time, Kurz was still foreign and integration minister. Then it became clear to me personally: The populist punch line is more important to him than solving the really pressing problems. But: Sebastian Kurz is not an Austrian Trump.
Then the content of the chat was not a surprise for you?
It was more of a confirmation of the profanity and brutality that could be guessed at behind the slick staging. At “Falter” we reported time and again about how meticulously Kurz planned to take over his party, disempowered people and fudged studies. We reported on how he works. We were criticized for that.
From politics?
There were intimidation attempts from the side. But we were also criticized by colleagues. Criticism of Chancellor Kurz was considered inappropriate in the media public. The editor-in-chief of “Kurier” once wrote that there should be less coverage of corruption because it harms the country’s corruption ranking. The “Falter” was there in a lone warrior position, even if we never understood it as a fight, but as journalism. We just did our job. A columnist for the “Kronen” newspaper even dedicated a pamphlet to us about this.
How would you describe the relationship between Sebastian Kurz and the media?
There is bought media. Then there are the conservative papers who have succumbed to Kurz’s charm and see him uncritically as a dashing reformer who is doing away with the socialist republic. He has always despised and boycotted critical media. And at the top of the ORF, the largest media organ in the country, he posted a confidante when the General Director was last elected. At the same time, Kurz has a very strong social media presence. He has a million followers on Facebook alone and almost half on Twitter. That is a lot more than the German politicians have. Kurz owes this to his social media group, among other things. Because of these professional appearances, he has also been referred to as media chancellor.
Under this media chancellor, Austria has slipped further and further in the ranking of press freedom and is now in 18th place. At the same time, Kurz was awarded the “Freedom Prize of the Media” this year. How does that fit together?
It must have been a cabaret or satirical award from Jan Böhmermann. There is no other way to explain it.
What does the scandal mean for politics and the media? Will there be consequences?
What we are currently experiencing is an attack on the separation of powers and, at the same time, it is in its prime. We have a strong judiciary and a strong opposition that instigates committees of inquiry and makes the files available to the public. This also gave us access to the chats. The public has been made aware of this political and media counter-deal and the allegations would be an occasion to reform the media promotion system. However, I am not very optimistic that something will change.