Advisory Board member Christoph Gerlinger steps down

The investor thus takes responsibility for the controversial thesis paper. Frank Thelen wants a "fair partnership" between start-ups and the press.

Christoph Gerlinger, a member of the Young Digital Economy Advisory Board, has drawn the consequences of the anti-press thesis paper and resigned from his position. He was responsible for the passages that called for the freedom of the press to be restricted so that IPOs of start-ups would receive less critical coverage. "I would like to apologize to all journalists for this, I deeply regret it and take responsibility for the fact that an inappropriate and misleading formulation of mine from an early partial concept of the position paper ended up in the final, published version due to a technical error," Gerlinger writes in a post on LinkedIn. "Our mistake as an advisory board is that our internal control mechanisms failed," continues the statement from the Young Digital Economy Advisory Board. The switch to agile working meant that correction loops did not work. Together with the ministry, the advisory board now wants to review internal processes.

The advisory board had uploaded a position paper to the website of the Federal Ministry of Economics. Among other things, it states that there is "IPO and new economy bashing" in the press. The state should ensure "balanced reporting". One demand in the list of measures: "Disciplining the press to provide factual, correct and complete information". The free media should also be obliged to report on small IPOs.

Distancing from the position paper

Criticism came from all sides: The German Journalists' Association called the demands "completely absurd". Economics Minister Peter Altmaier, who is to be advised by the committee, disapproved of the demands. He ordered the paper to be deleted from the ministry's website. "In a personal conversation, I accepted Mr. Gerlinger's resignation. I thanked him for his voluntary work on the advisory board," said Altmaier in a statement.

Other members of the advisory board and co-authors of the position paper, including Alex von Frankenberg, chairman of the High-Tech Gründerfonds Amorelie founder Lea-Sophie Cramer, also apologized. Cramer herself did not take part in the decisive meeting of the advisory board and "was not involved in the development of the published version of the paper", she told the Handelsblatt. However, this was an omission that should not happen with such important topics and positions, which ultimately included her name. Von Frankenberg also admitted that he had not read the paper again before publication.

Frank Thelen calls for a "fair partnership"

Frank Thelen, who is not a member of the advisory board, also finds the paper "one hundred percent wrong", as he told the Handelsblatt said. However, Thelen also calls for a "fair partnership between start-ups and the media" if "a good ecosystem is to be established in Europe". Thelen continued: "The press often tears start-ups apart unnecessarily and that is not ideal." He would like to see more joy and enthusiasm for start-ups - also in the media landscape. Thelen's statements were criticized by the German Journalists' Association on Twitter. "We don't need a 'fair partnership' between editorial offices and start-ups, but freedom of the press. And we have the press code for journalistic work."