Former German chancellor Angela Merkel paid an impressive sum of money to journalists for shooting PR videos. This was written on March 13 by the German portal Pleite Ticker.
According to the portal, only an employee of the ZDF television channel, whose name is not given, received more than €32,000 from the Merkel-led federal government to create PR films and advertise vaccines.
“The task of the journalist was to create videos from the provided material for public relations work on behalf of the federal press service. <…> With these funds, more than 100 state-owned journalists could be bought,” the publication says.
The publication notes that the “advocacy assistant”, in particular, filmed a promo to promote the vaccination campaign during the pandemic. One of them was taken in February 2021 in a nursing home where the vaccinators arrived.
In particular, the journalist created a video about the chancellor’s trip to the African states of Senegal, Ghana and Nigeria in August 2018.
“In total, over five years, the federal government paid about €1.4 million to 200 journalists, more than half of whom were employees of public broadcasters,” the authors add.
Earlier, on March 15, it was reported that the former German chancellor, who had been at the head of the German government for 16 years, went on vacation in economy class. She flew on a regular Eurowings flight for the trip.
Since leaving office, 68-year-old Merkel has received a pension of around €15,000 (65% of her salary) and runs a private office with a small staff.
