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This is a great thing because in places like in Spain the fee is not present, is is paid by taxes, and as a result, the Government controls it. So instead of s

This is a great thing because in places like in Spain the fee is not present, is is paid by taxes, and as a result, the Government controls it. So instead of serving the nation, radio and TV becomes the servant of local and presidential powers. This is not fun at all, this is dangerous, as the media is used mainly for propaganda. In Spain everybody pays TV3 that sponsors secessionism and RTVE that does promote socialism-comunism because those in charge are secessionist or socialist communist. This year RTVE's budget has increased 25%. For communists propaganda is essential.

echelon 6y ago
> This is not fun at all, this is dangerous, as the media is used mainly for propaganda. Well, in the United States we have Fox News and OAN. They're entirely commercial and serve a single party's interests. (Or rather, the interests of the management.) These channels are profitable because people want to watch it.
WanderPanda 6y ago
Its not like that is fundamentally different in germany. There is a socialist / green majority in the “journalists”. The only difference I see from your description is that in Germany it is not the media following the politics, but rather the politics following the media. It’s pretty messed up because there is a natural bias of anti market people inclined to join the state-run media where there is no competition. It’s ironical how every second “documentary” quickly diverts into complaining about monopolies and blaming capitalism for everything (even for the pandemic...) when they are part of one of the biggest and purest monopolies themselves... We just demand a simple opt out, is that too much to ask for?
- mikojan 6y ago
  > The only difference I see from your description is that in Germany it is not the media following the politics, but rather the politics following the media. It works the same as everywhere. The state is reliably broadcasting a constant stream of press releases and other information. If you're a journalist, that's a good source in your day to day work. GEZ does not change that
  - WanderPanda 6y ago
    Its not like all information is equal. They still (need to) do heavy filtering and emphasize certain aspects. So there is plenty of room to (even unconsciously) implement biases. In the end most of it ends up being biased to handing ever more power to the state, as thats precisely how they are funded. Just follow the money
gambiting 6y ago
I don't know why you think that the fee paying somehow prevents that control by the government? In Poland the fee is paid separately and the national television and radio have turned into a right wing propaganda arm of the government, it's an actual joke, if you want to amuse yourself try watching TVP with translation, it's just awful. And there's definitely an argument that the BBC is at least somewhat partisan, despite being funded from the public and optional fee.
- usrusr 6y ago
  Clearly, independent funding is only a prerequisite, not a guarantee of impartisanship.
usrusr 6y ago
The downside of how it's done in Germany or the UK is that the fee isn't proportional to income, like taxes are (or are suppressed to be). And it doesn't have to be a choice between one or the other, a perfectly workable best of both worlds path exists, in Germany even: There's a concept called "church tax" that is handled, for those who are members in one of the "qualified" confessional church orgs (in this car, "qualification" basically boils down to Napoleonic age precedent but this is orthogonal to the topic at hand) by the tax collection authorities in a proxy role for the church orgs, but which is very clearly outside of government budget scope. Exactly the same setup could be used to collect income-based broadcast contributions without subjecting broadcasters to budgetary government influence.

echelon 6y ago

> This is not fun at all, this is dangerous, as the media is used mainly for propaganda. Well, in the United States we have Fox News and OAN. They're entirely commercial and serve a single party's interests. (Or rather, the interests of the management.) These channels are profitable because people want to watch it.

WanderPanda 6y ago

Its not like that is fundamentally different in germany. There is a socialist / green majority in the “journalists”. The only difference I see from your description is that in Germany it is not the media following the politics, but rather the politics following the media. It’s pretty messed up because there is a natural bias of anti market people inclined to join the state-run media where there is no competition. It’s ironical how every second “documentary” quickly diverts into complaining about monopolies and blaming capitalism for everything (even for the pandemic...) when they are part of one of the biggest and purest monopolies themselves... We just demand a simple opt out, is that too much to ask for?

mikojan 6y ago
> The only difference I see from your description is that in Germany it is not the media following the politics, but rather the politics following the media. It works the same as everywhere. The state is reliably broadcasting a constant stream of press releases and other information. If you're a journalist, that's a good source in your day to day work. GEZ does not change that
- WanderPanda 6y ago
  Its not like all information is equal. They still (need to) do heavy filtering and emphasize certain aspects. So there is plenty of room to (even unconsciously) implement biases. In the end most of it ends up being biased to handing ever more power to the state, as thats precisely how they are funded. Just follow the money

gambiting 6y ago

I don't know why you think that the fee paying somehow prevents that control by the government? In Poland the fee is paid separately and the national television and radio have turned into a right wing propaganda arm of the government, it's an actual joke, if you want to amuse yourself try watching TVP with translation, it's just awful. And there's definitely an argument that the BBC is at least somewhat partisan, despite being funded from the public and optional fee.

usrusr 6y ago
Clearly, independent funding is only a prerequisite, not a guarantee of impartisanship.

usrusr 6y ago

The downside of how it's done in Germany or the UK is that the fee isn't proportional to income, like taxes are (or are suppressed to be). And it doesn't have to be a choice between one or the other, a perfectly workable best of both worlds path exists, in Germany even: There's a concept called "church tax" that is handled, for those who are members in one of the "qualified" confessional church orgs (in this car, "qualification" basically boils down to Napoleonic age precedent but this is orthogonal to the topic at hand) by the tax collection authorities in a proxy role for the church orgs, but which is very clearly outside of government budget scope. Exactly the same setup could be used to collect income-based broadcast contributions without subjecting broadcasters to budgetary government influence.