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Comment by ChuckNorris89 | Hacker News Reader

Because the government is the one who gave them the authority to levy the fees from you and the people running the public broadcasters are all directly or indirectly politically connected to the major parties.

Which other independent private business can just straight up charge you without you signing up for their service beforehand?

In Germany and I guess, in most countries, the public broadcasters are basically low-key propaganda arms of the government. The whole separate tax thing is a intermediate smokescreen to give the public the illusion of independence.

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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.

You're contradicting yourself. You say it's good that the TV tax is levied by the government like social insurance fees but instead of it going directly to the government like social insurance fees, it goes to an "independent" organization and that's the "feature"? LOL, what?!

Do you really think that money is no strings attached? Ideally it would be and I guess that's the idea on paper but in practice, the public broadcasters almost never criticize the ruling coalition on the "don't bite the hand that feeds you" rule.

IIRC during the 2015 migrant crisis, no public debate was allowed on public TV over the decisions made to open the borders and the only opinion allowed on TV was that "it's good for everyone" with any argument against mass immigration (not immigrants themselves) heavily verboten.

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.

That money has no strings attached, unless the amunt is about to be changed. An changes to the fee have to be agreed upon by both chambers, Bundestag and Bundesrat. The Bundesat, representing the individual states, means state parliaments have to agree first. That's the reason why the last fee increase fell through after one state feared backlash from the AfD leaning members of the CDU (Merkals party) and voted against it.

Once the fee is agreed upon, it cannot be changed either way with out every parliamnt agreeing to do so. The money cannot be held back by te "government" (we have coalitions, and those change regularly every 10 years or so). Neither can it be held back for state broadcasters (third programms) by the local governments or parliaments. Sounds pretty tempering free to me.

And the debate did happen in 2015, or didn't you see the same panel discussions I saw? It also happened in print and the public broacasters reported aboutthat debate in their news segments. The nature of these news segments being to report facts and not to debate.

It just turned out that only one party really opposed the opening of boarders, along with the right wings of the cnservative parties CDU and CSU. Thos are not the majority but rather a very very loud minority.

Nitpicking but this is a common misconception:

> An changes to the fee have to be agreed upon by both chambers, Bundestag and Bundesrat.

The federal government, and thus Bundestag and Bundesrat, have no say in the funding or operation of Germany's public broadcasters. The exception being Deutsche Welle which is not available in Germany and has an "external" audience.

The funding on operation of public broadcasters is instead determined by a compact between the 16 states.

Ah thanks for the clarification! I always had the impression it was the Bundesrat\Tag. The compact things confused me. But that makes this whole thing even more robust it seems.

Yes, that is indeed how things work. It is not part of the budget and the ruling coalition has no mandate to bargain with it. I believe most European countries have similar checks and balances in place. I do not understand what the contradiction is, but if there is one it must be widespread.

We pay for many things we can not use, roads where we don't live, schools we can not attend and health care for the opposite sex. That does not mean public funding is good in itself, only that the grey area between what is public and what is private is large and politicized and settled over time. I disagree with many of them but that is no reason to get counterfactual.

There was a loud public debate about the migration crisis, both at the time and for a long time afterwards. It is important to recognize these things even if we don't personally agree with the outcome. That's part of living in a democracy.

That's entirely dependent on the country and political culture. At the very least I can guaranty that in Britain, France and Germany public networks and new agencies are far more neutral and independent than private ones. And that's a result of political parties being unable to co-opt the administrative machinery of the government system. So they end up co-opting businessmen, who themselves control private media for influence.

In a well designed democracy nobody is strong enough for long enough to take over public media, the school system, the judiciary, the army etc.

The public broadcasters in Germany aren't propaganda arms of the government and are generally respected across political affiliation, except perhaps by the sort of folks that think AfD has the right approach. They may exhibit some editorial lean (https://www.dw.com/en/a-dual-broadcasting-system/a-435426), but from everything I've seen not even to the level that folks in the US complain about CNBC or Fox News.

Germany, in fact, comes in with one of the highest press freedom scores from Reporters without Borders:

https://rsf.org/en/germany , https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/germany-media-profile/

National public Radio and the Public Broadcast Company in the US, in further illustration, hasn't been Donald Trump's megaphone.

Just generally, independent journalism is important and can be subverted whether the sources are public or private. Open pluralistic oversight is most important to maintaining balance and Germany seems to get it right, while also making sure the media can be accessible to any resident.

Seems a not-awful approach to trying to ensure a more-educated population, which is also good for a democracy.

> except perhaps by the sort of folks that think AfD has the right approach

Ah right, everyone that disagrees must be one of those people so their opinion doesn't matter.

> They may exhibit some editorial lean

More than "some".

> CNBC or Fox News

Those are corporations that noone is not forced to fund if you disagree with them.

> Just generally, independent journalism is important

Except you can't give certain organizations a unique monopoly to collect fees from everyone and then call it independent with a straight face.

Also, journalism is only a tiny part of german public TV channels. They also throw tons of money on sports broadcasting and game shows while promoting gambling. Add to that the insanity of having a local channel for every state. Even if you agree that public funded news is a good thing, the current setup is hardly an efficient way to accomplish that.

> Seems a not-awful approach to trying to ensure a more-educated population, which is also good for a democracy.

You can call it "education" if you want.

Finally, unlike taxes, the TV fee is not means tested in Germany meaning that if you have a low income and don't fall into the few groups that are excempt then it is a very real burden.

> Ah right, everyone that disagrees must be one of those people so their opinion doesn't matter. > More than "some".

This sounds like disgruntled opinion over having to pay 18 EUR/month for something you don't watch.

Please feel free to put something more substantial behind your snappy retorts. The studies and research I've read indicates that the people mostly trust and appreciate the balance in German public broadcasting, and most disgruntled with public broadcasting in Germany are on the radical sides. The second bit is more universally supported by psychological research indicating that the average person wants to watch stuff that confirms their biases.

> Except you can't give certain organizations a unique monopoly to collect fees from everyone and then call it independent with a straight face.

You're perverting the meaning of monopoly here, I think. There's a publicly funded infrastructure for broadcast programming, as well as privately funded sources of programming. ZDF and ARD don't have exclusive right to broadcast in any market in Germany as far as I know?

The publicly funded infrastructure includes representative oversight mechanisms from political and community sources, which provide a far more robust mechanism for neutrality checking vs the programming decisions of a profit-motivated private organization.

> Finally, unlike taxes

Means testing is a fantastic point, I whole-heartedly agree that statutory funding structures like this shouldn't overburden any slice of the population.

>In Germany and I guess, in most countries, the public broadcasters are basically low-key propaganda arms of the government. The whole separate tax thing is a intermediate smokescreen to give the public the illusion of independence.

This claim elides the difference between e.g. the BBC or Deutsche Welle and RT. It would be naive to think that the BBC is wholly independent of politicians. But it would be equally naive to think that they're no better than a state propaganda outlet.

I can't speak to Germany, but I view the BBC as the voice of the Establishment. That's a subtly different thing from being the voice of the government of the day. That's why they look right-biased if you're looking at their news output, and left-biased if you're looking at their drama/comedy output: they're just reflecting the Established status quo.

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