A tribute to the GEZ — Why the hell would I do that?
In Germany almost every household has to pay a certain amount of money for public service broadcasters, like ARD and ZDF, and can therefore consume them. In recent years I’ve increasingly heard how people complained about why there is a need for public television or radio and even more distinctly why they have to pay for it (which happens through “GEZ” or “Rundfunkbeitrag”). Even politicians, especially of the right-wing party AfD, asked for this kind of compulsory payment to be abolished. One politician, Beatrix von Storch (AfD), refused paying GEZ and thus her account got garnished. On social media she used this, to rant about the unnecessity and the unfairness of such a payment. But why is it especially the AfD, a party which is seen by many as racist and maybe anticonstitutional, which complains about GEZ being not only unfair, but also unjust in a judicial way?
Independent media?
The thought behind public service broadcasting is to ensure an easy and independent access to media as information and education. They are supposed to be independent from advertisers and other financial investors or even independent from the state and politics. This should guarantee an open-minded coverage and an unbiased media. But is this really possible? The money of ARD and ZDF come from the citizens, but they are still strongly influenced by politics and parties, as some cases prove, for example when the CSU-Party tried to influence the ZDF in changing their programm in 2012. Additionally public service broadcasters still air advertisement and are in this way dependent on ratings and large companies. So I think you can say: Public service broadcasters are not as independent as you would wish.
No alternative?
So are there other options? There are not few who want to socialize public service broadcasters and again it is the proposition of right-wing party AfD to place them under government control. This could be, because the AfD is definitely not happy with how media presents them and wants to control them, if they win the 2017 election. No citizen of Germany should want that, AfD or really any party to control media. This would be most definitely against the right for free press. The other option would be to privatize media completely, which would be horrifying. This would lead to a kind of media, where anyone who has the most money would have the most influence. For example a rich person or company could buy enough influence to force their opinion on the people, like FOX or Rupert Murdoch do in the USA.
In the end I don’t think there is much of an alternative for public service broadcasting and its reputation really is too bad (also considering the quality of the content in opposition to e.g. private TV). On the other hand it is also not perfect and should always be observed critically as any media institution.
