In developing news from Germany, a high court just ruled that a political party cannot be denied its right to advertise on the public broadcasting circuit. One of the public networks, the Hessischer Rundfunk (HR), had recently refused to provide such services. Defending HR's actions, Helmut Reitze, the Director General of the network, stated:
As far as political strategies go, this one is pretty shamelessly totalitarian. Mr. Reitze thought he could just choke off the public's access to political messaging, and saturate that same public with messages from the only parties that the network wants the public to support. But, considering HR is a public broadcasting service that the population finances, what right does a public broadcasting network have to decide what political parties the public can know about?
The situation is actually even worse than that, though. To understand why, there are a few more details that have to be known about the public broadcasting circuit in Germany. See, in Germany, funding for public broadcasting comes from the GEZ, an agency that hires the unemployed to go around knocking on every door where a television, radio or computer is thought to be on the other side. If the agent suspects a match, they will try to get inside, get their calculator out and demand residents pay a mandatory tax for each device owned - and perhaps more. Indeed, if nobody answers the door, representatives will continue to show up and the reminders to pay will pile up in the mail, with late fees and other penalties. One might receive notices directed at people who have moved years ago - and still be expected to pay, since the charge is per household. There have been protests against the GEZ and a broader movement to have it banned in court, to no avail. But the point is that, clearly, the German system intends to shake the people upside down to collect every penny. And, when this is done to fund a broadcaster that wants to manipulate the political party options that the public can and cannot see, it is pretty alarming. The situation is even more alarming knowing that, as far as Germany goes, the same umbrella that controls BR and is obviously politically interested controls most of your media. Indeed, BR is part of a broader media group called the ARD which, for all intents an purposes, is a monopoly. This may sound like an exaggeration, but it really is not; the ARD controls the following networks, as well as a number of joint projects and subsidiaries:
So, while the German media circuit is generally not like the mass-consolidated, privately-operated web of media and communications shareholders in the United States, in effect, the result is the same: the select few have the chance to filter world view and opinions to control the status quo. Sadly, where the ARD is not at issue, the situation is even more comparable to that of the Americans. In Germany, the majority shareholders of the remaining major broadcasters, printers and publishers are directly linked to one political party, the SPD, to which they are loyal. It is important to be aware of the consequences; when the eyes and ears of the public are controlled by the same sources of ruling power, the people are only seeing and hearing what the ruling regime and its ideological allies want to (and can afford to) show. For that reason, the court decision against the HR was a rare victory for freedom - the freedom of discourse and the freedom to use one's own eyes and ears to construct an opinion.
"The cause of freedom of expression and the parties' freedom to campaign cannot lead to public broadcasters being forced to spread campaign messages that contain racist or inhuman ideology."Of course, the quiet part not being said aloud is that just about anything that could be considered racism - from racial threats to using racial slurs to making negative generalizations about a group to suggesting that certain citizens of Germany are not German - is completely illegal in Germany. In certain contexts, speaking out about immigration is even illegal. What all of this means is there is not much room for a political party to say anything "racist and inhuman" without jeopardizing itself legally, so one has to wonder if anyone really took that risk and what Mr. Reitze is really on about. Furthermore, a truly "racist and inhuman" commercial would be pretty ineffective as far as advertising goes and likely push the public away, leaving us to wonder why anyone would put in the work to create an advertisement that does that. The answer is there is probably more we are not being told here. Pulling back the curtain, one can guess Reitze is probably using buzzwords - "racist", inhuman", etc - to classify and footnote whatever the party actually has to say so that the public will ignore it. Plus, by refusing to air the party's commercial, Reize makes it possible that the public may never even know the difference!
As far as political strategies go, this one is pretty shamelessly totalitarian. Mr. Reitze thought he could just choke off the public's access to political messaging, and saturate that same public with messages from the only parties that the network wants the public to support. But, considering HR is a public broadcasting service that the population finances, what right does a public broadcasting network have to decide what political parties the public can know about?
The situation is actually even worse than that, though. To understand why, there are a few more details that have to be known about the public broadcasting circuit in Germany. See, in Germany, funding for public broadcasting comes from the GEZ, an agency that hires the unemployed to go around knocking on every door where a television, radio or computer is thought to be on the other side. If the agent suspects a match, they will try to get inside, get their calculator out and demand residents pay a mandatory tax for each device owned - and perhaps more. Indeed, if nobody answers the door, representatives will continue to show up and the reminders to pay will pile up in the mail, with late fees and other penalties. One might receive notices directed at people who have moved years ago - and still be expected to pay, since the charge is per household. There have been protests against the GEZ and a broader movement to have it banned in court, to no avail. But the point is that, clearly, the German system intends to shake the people upside down to collect every penny. And, when this is done to fund a broadcaster that wants to manipulate the political party options that the public can and cannot see, it is pretty alarming. The situation is even more alarming knowing that, as far as Germany goes, the same umbrella that controls BR and is obviously politically interested controls most of your media. Indeed, BR is part of a broader media group called the ARD which, for all intents an purposes, is a monopoly. This may sound like an exaggeration, but it really is not; the ARD controls the following networks, as well as a number of joint projects and subsidiaries:
So, while the German media circuit is generally not like the mass-consolidated, privately-operated web of media and communications shareholders in the United States, in effect, the result is the same: the select few have the chance to filter world view and opinions to control the status quo. Sadly, where the ARD is not at issue, the situation is even more comparable to that of the Americans. In Germany, the majority shareholders of the remaining major broadcasters, printers and publishers are directly linked to one political party, the SPD, to which they are loyal. It is important to be aware of the consequences; when the eyes and ears of the public are controlled by the same sources of ruling power, the people are only seeing and hearing what the ruling regime and its ideological allies want to (and can afford to) show. For that reason, the court decision against the HR was a rare victory for freedom - the freedom of discourse and the freedom to use one's own eyes and ears to construct an opinion.
