Well lots of countries do have public broadcasting. There is an extensive list compiled here. [1]
It even does have its uses, if it were not for the abomination it is in Germany. If it were not for the fact, that the public broadcasters are controlled by political parties and clearly are everything but unbalanced (ok, compared to the US they are, but non the less).
I would gladly pay the money for them, if it were not for the fact, that most of this goes into financing soccer rights and formula 1 rights. And some "Volksmusik" shit and such.
I have to pay (being a German citizen with our own household).
I could clearly see a real usecase for public broadcasting, not tied to advertising revenue, doing real investigative journalism and doing great documentations. But I am being naive here. And a dreamer.
And, of course, to the point, many have a state paid public broadcaster for news and other programs (BBC, France does, Germany iirc does, Italy, etc) - and it's not some niche channels delegated to upper middle class viewers (like, I think, NPR is, if that's indeed public).
Many countries have tax funded public television. In many countries one could argue that public television (BBC,CBC,ARD,ZDF,NPR,etc) carry generally high quality programming and often hard hitting investigative features compared to private interests.
Government, as professional public service, does not have to mean executive branch and laws for separation of power exist
Just a small correction. They are not state-run but run by a sort of public trust. There are meticulous mechanisms that are intended to keep the public broadcasting system independent of government influence. These work to some degree, and are just ridiculous boongoggles in other cases. E.g. to be independent, they are not funded by taxes, but have their own non-government agency (GEZ) that collects broadcast fees. Nowadays every household has to pay, but even a couple of years ago you could opt out if you didn't have a TV or radio. The GEZ had a special squad of investigators to check if you owned a TV or radio.
All in all it works fairly well, but it is somewhat elitist and panders to a strange bouquet of special interests that strangely mirror the composition of its "neutral" governing body.
All in all though, German radio is pretty good and public television isn't dominated by ads and has high quality content, especially if you are into more high-brow cultural productions. And the news are excellent.
Many countries have public media organisations that are funded by taxes or a license fee, and run in the public interest without a strong profit motive. The BBC is a well-known example, but many countries have their own version.
I don't think this is a solution though. These organisations are distrusted just as much as anything else.
Most western european countries have public media that operate independently from the government.
Many forms are possible: the British BBC single broadcaster model to the fragmented model of my country with many competing broadcasting associations. I think most models work out well enough.
Of course, comparing to Pravda is a straw man argument: I was promoting a balance between (independent) public and commercial media
Having a public broadcaster means nothing. We (Poland) also have one but the quality of their websites and TV channels was always painfully average and since 2015 it's outright propaganda.
Calling public media cunts already gives me an idea what kind of person you are.
Rundfunkbeitrag has to be paid by every household by law and is meant to ensure independent reporting by the public media, especially independent from political parties or corporations.
We can argue how well this works in Germany, but there are quite a lot of examples around the world where it's way worse.
Public broadcasting in Germany is no better than private media. In fact most topics are reported the same and even the opinion is the same. But even ignoring this, it is a big problem that publicly funded media is in direct economic competition with privately funded media. This is exacerbated by the official entertainment mission (Unterhaltungsauftrag[1]) and the usage of advertisement.
In Germany, we have had public radio and tv stations for decades, funded by a tax-like mechanism for people owing tv and radio recievers. Since they are public instituions, political influence is obvious.
Contrary to jerf's assertions, however, it seems to work both ways: It provides news that is often carefully balanced and 'factual' and there are also formats that pursue a political agenda and publish inconvinient stuff.
German public media is not state sponsored. It’s an independent entity which is paid for by public fees (not taxes, the money never goes through the governments coffers). There are some levers that could be used to exert some level of control, for example the height of the fee is set by a commission that is partly under government control and many ex-politicians get elected into high positions, but all in all, public media is fairly well removed from the governments control here. The constitutional court watches over this pretty well, too. The system has been set up in such a fashion exactly due to the experiences under the nazi rule.
I’m currently more concerned about private media having an agenda that promotes the right.
Democracy requires an informed electorate and publicly funded broadcasters are a means to achieve that. The government must have as little control as possible over their funding to ensure their journalistic independence.
That's the guiding theory at resulted in most European countries having some variation of a public broadcaster funded by TV (formally radio) licences.
There are many implementation differences between countries and none of them are perfect but I would argue that those I'm familiar with serve their purpose.
I mean, I love me some BBC, but there are plenty of publicly funded media outlets that are essentially just state propaganda. I don't think public funding is a panacea.
It seems like it is viable to establish a publicly funded institution dedicated to national-local news. There is the Post Office and the DMV, so couldn't there also exist small offices of reporters and journalists to broadcast and publish news that is funded from taxes and public grants? Even if it is not as granular as the Post Office, there would at least be an agency responsible for the information and entertainment broadcast by the media network.
Additionally, there could exist public-private relationships similar to how the BBC operates BBC Studios, so there is still some incentive to run certain programs "like a business", so to speak.
Some kind of national media agency could also help disseminate government data to the public that is already being distilled and published by private news corporations. For example, a lot of "newsworthy" information or background comes from government sources, such as census data, economic data, and weather data. Journalists read and distill openly published government information to make it accessible to the public, and the government could do the same thing to put more effort into the 'public presentation' side of the information they produced.
There's no guarantee this would be 100% perfect; whether the news comes from the government or a corporation there's always uncertainty in bias and truth. Having a public news agency doesn't stop corporations from existing, it's just another network but with a public safety net. If people want the news, then deciding to use their tax dollars to fund public news is an available option.
Other than NPR and PBS, how often is public broadcasting (tv, internet, audio) actually watched or listened to in the US? It seems pretty low.
Public broadcasting networks like the BBC and CBC could be nit-picked, but overall they still produce some solid content that draws large audiences. BBC One and BBC Radio 1 are consistently good and interesting, even for a non-Brit.
Germany has a remarkable system of public broadcasting that is unequaled in the world. Following World War 2 it was obvious that the centralisation of media was one important factor in the rise of the Nazis and the western allies wanted to ensure that there was no way that the federal government could be anywhere near broadcasting again. Even just legislative control. The private broadcasters are regulated by the states. In fact, the Facebook pages and YouTube channels of the government in particular have come under a fair amount of criticism for having stepped over the line.
This prohibition is anchored in the Basic Law through broadcasting not being specifically listed as a power given to the federal government and as such is under the control of the states. The federal government had planned to launch a television service to compete with that established by the regional public broadcasters. It was shut down by the constitutional court. Incidentally, Australia has almost identical but slightly more restrictive wording. The constitutionality of the ABC has never actually been tested directly in court. One dealt with that question peripherally and that aspect of the decision was met with derision in the Federal Law Review and the arguments, weak then, are completely idiotic these days.
Back to Germany. The reason why it costs this much is because that is the price of a media organisation and system that is inherently federalised, distributed, with checks and balances all along the way, in a way where by its very nature it is meant to hold itself at least accountable enough and to stop the rise of fascism or other extreme ideology.
It has done a remarkable job in that regard, AfD notwithstanding. If the media landscape would be led by Sky News like in Australia, pushing election conspiracies to the top of YouTube and extensively now cited by Trump himself or Fox News in the US or the BBC’s failure on Brexit we would not have seen a cordon sanitaire like we do because the hold the bastards accountable.
The biggest media organisation from entirely different organisations, ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandfunk and they do so not in any way related to the Federal Republic of Germany but as sibling organisations that its constituent states decided to form.
That is a beautiful concept. It was imposed on Germany, it is expensive, but it is an important part of keeping an ombudsman on democracy, public broadcasting that is an entirely seperate pillar to the very existence of the country itself.
It is a price that we need to pay and we shouldn’t mock Germany for maintaining it or to consider it antiquated or complicated.
We should look in the mirror and make some effort to have someone other than Rupert Murdoch stare back at us.
There’s some saying attributed to him: When I call 10 Downing St they listen, when I call Brussels they couldn’t give a shit.
The cost of public broadcasting in Germany is a drop in the bucket versus Brexit alone, just a recent escapade now led by one of The Sun’s former editors.
German Public Broadcasting is only partially about entertainment. It is a publicly owned ombudsman acting in the public interest, while independent of most other power structures, and talking to the public every day. And there’s actually at least three, maybe a dozen ombudsmen depending on how you count. Wonderful.
In Germany (and the same applies to many other countries as well) the majority of people watch public broadcast news every day. It's financed by tax money so there is no profit motive and it's reasonably unbiased. I think a major reason for the current political divide in the US is that both camps have their own sources of information.
All of Europe has public service. Actually most of the world does, not just authoritarian countries. Even the US has NPR, PBS and (god forbid) VOA. I'm not saying it's not all propaganda, but it's definitely not the kind you're thinking about (in most countries anyway.)
It even does have its uses, if it were not for the abomination it is in Germany. If it were not for the fact, that the public broadcasters are controlled by political parties and clearly are everything but unbalanced (ok, compared to the US they are, but non the less).
I would gladly pay the money for them, if it were not for the fact, that most of this goes into financing soccer rights and formula 1 rights. And some "Volksmusik" shit and such.
I have to pay (being a German citizen with our own household).
I could clearly see a real usecase for public broadcasting, not tied to advertising revenue, doing real investigative journalism and doing great documentations. But I am being naive here. And a dreamer.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_broadcasting
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