ORF ZIB2 on Long COVID

So a while ago I came across an interesting post on Bluesky about ZIB2’s coverage of Long COVID and ME/CFS. The segment discusses how daily activities can worsen Long COVID symptoms.

Of course it took me a while to get back to that bookmark and find the time to watch the interview. Guess what, the link is dead now just ~3 months later.

Because Austria, in its infinite wisdom, has laws that restrict how long public broadcasters can keep content online. According to § 4e of the ORF-Gesetz, most programs can only be made available for a maximum of 30 days after broadcast. News segments often have even shorter availability periods – sometimes just 14 days.

This is a real problem when it comes to getting facts right and preserving important public health information. Here we have an instance of public broadcast media providing informed coverage about Long COVID and ME/CFS, and poof – it’s gone after a short while. Meanwhile, if you search for the same topic on YouTube, you’ll most likely end up drowning in a sea of disinformation, conspiracy theories, and “miracle cures” that stay online forever. The irony is painful: publicly funded, fact-checked journalism disappears while misinformation has eternal life on the internet.

Don’t get me wrong – public broadcasters don’t get everything right 100% of the time either. But that’s just another reason why we need these archives to remain accessible. When content is preserved, others can reference it, fact-check claims, build on research, or even correct mistakes. The whole point of having a public record is that it allows for scrutiny and accountability. When everything just vanishes after a month, we lose not just the good reporting, but also the ability to hold anyone accountable for the bad reporting.

These restrictive laws didn’t appear in a vacuum – they’re the result of decades of aggressive lobbying by Austria’s private media industry. The VÖZ (Verband Österreichischer Zeitungen) has been pushing for years to limit ORF’s online presence, arguing that publicly funded news content creates unfair competition with private publishers. The latest restrictions were particularly harsh: ORF is now limited to just 30% text content and maximum 350 articles per week. So while private media companies successfully lobbied to cripple public broadcasting’s digital reach, they’ve essentially ensured in this case that high-quality, fact-checked health information disappears while misinformation thrives unchecked. Brilliant strategy, really.

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