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Comment by ma2rten | Hacker News Reader

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.

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From the perspective of a German who follows a lot of american news this seems to be exactly right. I would love to hear from someone originally from the US who follows German news/lives in Germany.

Interestingly there is -in my opinion- an unreasonably high number of people in Germany who are against paying for this state funded broadcast. I think many people don't realize how lucky we are that our media is not (consciously or unconsciously) driving us apart to generate more views/clicks etc.

Just because it doesn't have private shareholders doesn't mean there's no income motive. Executives want to maximize the money they can pay themselves regardless of whether the company distributes dividends.

That's true. I actually don't know how the incentives are structured for executives in the German broadcast but they seem to reward creating quality, unbiased news.

If you look at the most popular newspaper in Germany which is essentially a tabloid it's clear it's not because there is less demand for that kind of trash in Germany.

I'm going to question the reasonably unbiased claim. In the U.S. we have PBS and NPR which are both well left of center and never call into question the size of federal government. If your fundamental political persuasion focuses on individual freedom, responsibility and limited government then state run media is considered very dangerous.

For what it's worth, we do have PBS ("Public Broadcasting Service") over here, which is funded via a combination of taxes and donations. A lot of folks dismiss it as being "left-leaning", though.

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