Comment by Bewelge | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Bewelge | Hacker News Reader

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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.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rundfunkrat [2] https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/zdf-anruf-wird-zu...

Links are in German.

I love how you pointed out this one conservative involvement and leave out the thousands of leftist involvements.

Also just quoting from the wikipedia article:

"Dies sind z. B. Gewerkschaften, Frauenverbände, Kirchen und Fraktionen."

"Vertreter von LGBT-Verbänden sind im Fernsehrat des..."

It might not fit into your left agenda but this is so far from reality.

Quoting the Wikipedia article you linked:

"Er kommt zu dem Ergebnis, dass weder die Räte ihrem Anspruch, die Vielfalt der Gesellschaft zu repräsentieren, gerecht werden noch dass benachteiligte Gruppen ausreichend anzutreffen sind."

I replied specifically to a comment concerning the ability of an extreme right wing government to use them as a propaganda channel by pointing out that there are some checks and balances in place.

And you reply to that by saying the inclusion of women, churches, unions and LGBT-organisations is a left thing and insinuating I have a political agenda. And the last quote actually says it does not live up to being a cross-section of society because underprivileged groups are not adequately represented. Going by your logic that would mean they're not left after all, right?

But seriously, you're spreading some pretty radical opinions all over this thread, calling people names and calling for the jailing of entire groups of people. I'm not going to further interact with you. Have a good night :-)

Thanks for the links and the explanation, very interesting. I guess it's silly to go through the whole debate here, I'm sure reams of A4 have been written on this topic.

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