On 16 January 2014, the ZDF host Markus Lanz interviewed Sahra Wagenknecht of the Left Party. Viewers objected that he kept interrupting her. A viewer from Leipzig started an online petition titled Raus mit Markus Lanz aus meiner Rundfunkgebühr, Markus Lanz out of my license fee, and 233,355 people signed it. ZDF’s director general, Thomas Bellut, answered her. He wrote that the insisting and the interruptions had come mit so viel Nachdruck, with so much force, that the debate on the substance was pushed into the background. ZDF kept Lanz.