[slopinthebag]

How is it guaranteed that public service broadcasting in Germany is not influenced by government?

To me this seems like a gross intervention in the media so I'm struggling not to be critical here. Just because different cultures have different values does not make them equal.

[fuoqi]

Because it is a "public broadcast", so it obviously "Cannot Give In To Government Pressure": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9tzoGFszog

[uniqueuid]

I mean, that's a very intuitive question if you're not used to the system, and a bit surprising if you are.

The historic precedent is that Germany's first Chancellor wanted to establish a state-funded and state-directed TV station. This was explicitly shut down by the constitutional court.

As a result, a system was established to (1) ensure funding is not decided upon by state institutions but instead by an independent body of experts (KEF). (2) control over the meta-level content decisions is exercised by a body (essentially like a parliament) of representatives from societal groups (e.g. including politicians, doctors, churches etc etc.)

Now the "gross intervention in the media" is a very recent American idea - up until pretty recently the US did have the fairness doctrine, it has licensing and so on, all of these are gross interventions in media. And so are libel laws etc. So the German insight that underpins its media regulation is: You cannot have functional mass media without enabling them through some form of state action, you can only try to be light-handed and implement checks and balances.

[slopinthebag]

I understand it's difficult for an outsider to understand the system, especially since I don't know who is part of the KEF or how it's run, same with the body of representatives. And I also acknowledge that having foreign tech companies curate media isn't much better.

In my country the federal government heavily subsidises media in addition to their own state-run broadcaster, and there is noticeable bias which is a point of contention. Perhaps the German system is superior in this regard. But I am heavily skeptical of interventions like this.

[bulbar]

It was installed by the US after WWII, because the Nazis took over the media and this public broadcasting system was installed to prevent that in the future. It's technically not paid by tax money and the government can not shut them down or stop their funding.

I believe watching some "tagesschau", the primary format of the public media in Germany would be something of interest for every US citizen. Just to experience the style.

It's part of German culture, all movies on all channels start at 8:15, because that's when tagesschau ends. The structure, the style, how news are reported has not really changed since the 80s, maybe it has basically never changed.

They do framing, I don't think you can report news without framing them, but it never gets wild and they try to show what different sides have to say about a matter.

Others have already pointed out that the source of this article is not reliable, so we should wait what actually gets proposed.

[raffael_de]

It is influenced by the government indirectly through complaisance. The heads of the stations are always aligned with CDU, SPD and the positions are passed on accordingly.