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Comment by kamyarg | Hacker News Reader

IMHO no newspaper is independent. Each has an owner that most of the times has a political agenda they try to push. So the best strategy is to read most prominent ones from different countries and create your own conclusion.

But if I had to trust one, I guess it would be a The Guardian or DW(Deutsche Welle).

DW is particularly interesting as every household in Germany has to pay a radio free(~17 Euros per month) that also in part supports DW(Along with their documentary series which as far as I can see don't hesitate to criticise the government or BND(secret service)).

It is not a tax and as a result the German Government would have a hard time pushing its agenda to it.

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Hi, made an account for this reply. I have no idea about DW but I would strongly advise you to take The Guardian with a grain of salt. I’m a (non-US) veteran and from my own personal experience (and personal biases, mind you), The Guardian is way off about its reporting. Will often (as most media) present a certain bias that just makes it impossible for me to trust them on any other subject I’m not involved in. In British journalism, BBC is better imo. However, a bias still exists. NYT’s investigative journalism is also not bad. Addressing the Guardian, I’d say their biggest issue is failing to address previous events that led to the current action. A (fake) example would be: Taliban deployed IEDs outside of a school zone, US retaliated and killed four combatants and two civilians in a drone strike. The Guardian’s headline would be: “US drone strike kills six, two of which civilian”. Is it wrong? No. Is it provoking? Yes, at least in my eyes. The rest of the article would probably discuss the US drone program or the specific event, rather than the chain of events as a whole. The IED incident might not be reported at all prior to the strike. Both the headline and the article itself have a disastrous impact on public opinion.

Actually, Deutsche Welle is the only German public broadcaster that is not funded by the radio fee since it's our international broadcaster. It's just illegal for the government to tell it what to broadcast.

Thanks a lot for correcting me, for some reason I had misremembered that they are also funded by broadcasting fees, but you are right, they are not; they are funded by tax money[1].

[1] https://www.dw.com/en/who-finances-dw/a-36767785

How is a fee the government mandates everyone pay not a tax?

I am guessing it’s similar to Japan’s NHK and their fees.

Sure. I just don’t see how that’s not a tax.

A fee does government collects is tax, if it just mandates to be collected by a non-governmental org is not tax.

Government does not get involved in collecting this fee except for having a law that an organization(ARD ZDF Deutschlandradio Beitragservice = joint contribution service for ARD ZDF and DR) can collect fees from every household that uses any kind of broadcaster/receiver devices.

It does not pass through the German government so it is not a tax.

More info: https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/27856/why-is-th...

Thanks for clarifying. I can see how that administrative difference matters. It doesn’t affect the “money out of my pocket” equation but does affect how the money is controlled.

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