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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
