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.
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.
Not saying I agree or disagree with your conclusion (I'm undecided), but I disagree with your reasoning. The question whether the Rundfunkbeitrag is good is partly philosophical ("what is the role of the state?") and partly practical ("does the state provide better media than private enterprise?"), and I don't think this example sheds light on either aspect.
It's not just any private business. Compare with social insurance fees that must also be paid, it is not something you can opt out of while being part of the society. The fact that it is not a state owned organization is a feature, not a bug.
In Germany specifically it is not a revolving door between public broadcasting and politics, and there is clearly journalistic pride in taking down corrupt politicians, so while it is always good to be suspicious of media calling it a propaganda arm is overstating it. Media isn't always neutral but privately financed isn't more neutral than others.
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.
Depending on a single revenue source is the exact opposite of being independent; which is why they are always that outraged if someone proposes some reduction in funding. They are 100% dependent on parliament will. (...whether this is something you want your media to be, I don't know. It's a very German thing.)
But of course it's not only financially. The German Rundfunkrat is basically designed to be the very essence of what other cultures might dispraise as corporatism. - Despite it's justification as some cross section of society.
I'm not necessarily against the idea but the institutional design of German state media is arguably very bad.
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.
Funny that you say this, because people that are pushing polarization have picked public broadcasting exactly as one of their main targets in Germany (calling it fake news paid by the government) trying to defund it. In Germany public broadcasters for the first time have a budget of that passed 10 billion EUR.
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.
and that's why nowadays I'm very happy to being coerced to pay 20 Euros/month for the German public broadcasting, which doesn't have the incentive to make money but rather to inform and raise questions. There have been quite a few articles in the Atlantic and The Guardian that basically said that these public broadcasters are helping to guide the public, so that these total culture wars are somewhat weakened in countries with strong public TV. However, I think this is only part of the equation, of equal importance is that voices are heard, meaning that democracy works. Where it doesn't work (well), something has to give and maybe that's why culture wars are stronger in those countries (e.g. USA). But that's just my hypothesis.
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.
In addition to that, German public-service broadcast is supposed to be independent. It is not state-TV. Politicians attempts to influence content and programming are generally frowned upon.
This is reflected in the supervising board and television board consisting of a broad mixture of appointees, both political and not [1]. The board does not have direct influence on editorial decisions [2] (in German).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZDF#Supervising_board
[2] https://www.zdf.de/zdfunternehmen/fragen-an-das-zdf-108.html
I agree Germany's public broadcasters aren't without their issues (e.g. there's a massive corruption scandal at RBB and a couple other stations at the moment), but there is no credible evidence about them doing shady or biased reporting (other than COVID deniers and the far-right complaining that their bullshit is being called out).
Our system was invented by the Allied occupation forces after WW2 precisely to enforce a publicly trusted news source as a prevention against lies and propaganda that led to the rise of the Nazis in the first place. Sad to see that the US hasn't dared and learned from the success - and now the US media system is objectively in shambles: Obvious crap like Tucker Carlson on a "news station", billionaires in control of major newspapers, and public trust in media fairness is at rock-bottom.
As for nationalized industries: see my reply to a sibling comment of yours.
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.
While I agree with your statement of not giving states too much power over the news, it overlooks the special organizational structure and paints a false picture. The highest controlling body of the öffentliche-rechtliche is the Rundfunkrat which is structured so that it represents "a cross-section of society". It includes organisations like unions or churches.
The Rundfunkrat appoints the Intendant who in turn has autonomy when it comes to programming.
I'm not saying that there's nothing to criticize about the structure but it was especially created in this way to provide checks and balances and not giving politicians direct control over the news. When some tried that in the past it made the news [2].
I think a right wing government would have an easier time defunding and replacing it with its own propaganda channels instead of using it for propaganda.
> two things would happen: firstly, politicians would think it's OK to instruct such media to follow a particular party line; and secondly, journalists and presenters that are the visible face of the media would also follow the party line, because they think that's where the money is coming from, so it would be stupid to do otherwise.
In my experience the opposite is true.
eg in Austria:
* politicans aren't allowed to interfere w/ the state owned programming and it's usually deeply rooted opinion in those institutes to be independent - they are a service to the people of the country not the current government
* private media are usually considered to be in favor of the party that pays them the most in ad spending and follows their own political agendas
* state owned news shows are usually known to be more critical (we done the research, stop BSing please) towards politicians than private ones (which politicians obviously consider unfair)
obviously in reality everything is shades of grey and not black/white. eg journalists still tend to have own political worldviews and report biased with them. but state owned doesn't by default mean propaganda channel.
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.
[1]: https://www.die-medienanstalten.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Rec... in §11
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