For a bit of a background for non-German folks and particularly Australians... that's a "government-run", "federal" broadcaster publishing this. Sounds like shooting your own foot? No.
The Basic Law of Germany, approved by the Western allies in 1949, included telecommunications as a responsibility of the federal government. And so the federal government thought to create a television service to compete with those of the states. The states sued and won in the constitutional court - saying that telecommunications only referred to infrastructure and delivery, definitely not the content (think fascism and communism as to why). The resulting corpse was used by the states as a foundation for a new broadcaster formed through a state treaty.
Germany is part of the EU and thus Frontex. The individual states of Germany organised a sister organisation, ZDF, to the Federal Republic of Germany itself and it isn't.
One reason I mention all this is because we've got a broken media environment unlike Germany here in Australia with a vast amount of media concentration. And the constitutionality of the ABC is based on the constitution saying that telephones and the postal service fall under the responsibility of the federal government. The ABC isn't Australia Post or Telstra. Yet somehow we all just went along with the premise. So this is what happened here in a similar situation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_Files_(Australia) - a police raid, the federal government applying pressure and a chilling effect for all future publications. The top three options in Australia for a 'stop the boats' leak like this would be 1. a broadcaster under a massive _chilling_ _effect_ by the 'stop the boats' government, 2. Rupert Murdoch or 3. Nine, with Costello in charge, who was literally the deputy 'stop the boats' guy. Horrifying.
So when I see comments like
> It's really worrying that there's some concentrated effort to take Frontex down.
No, this leak comes from the constituent states of Germany being concerned by a "superior" power doing things that they haven't been authorised to do. Whether it's the Federal Republic of Germany deciding to start a public broadcaster despite the states (and Allied powers) not having agreed to that being its responsibility or whether it's the European Union starting a military (which it's not allowed to do) it's the same thing. It might be a concentrated effort, whatever - it doesn't matter - because it's a constitutional necessity. This leak here is an extremely important part of the process that all "inferior" constituent parts of something should engage in to keep the greater parts in check.
Something the constituent states of Australia should take more seriously.
In addition to that, German public-service broadcast is supposed to be independent. It is not state-TV. Politicians attempts to influence content and programming are generally frowned upon.
This is reflected in the supervising board and television board consisting of a broad mixture of appointees, both political and not [1]. The board does not have direct influence on editorial decisions [2] (in German).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZDF#Supervising_board
[2] https://www.zdf.de/zdfunternehmen/fragen-an-das-zdf-108.html
You’re right, I had missed that. I had watched the original segment but evidently missed that part. Partly probably by design because how the information was obtained and collated kind of distracts from the subject matter.
AFAICS it's not a leak, but a regular freedom of information request. And I'm not too familiar with how German media works, but if it's anything like the Dutch national broadcaster, it's not actually the states that are pursuing this, but journalists on their own accord.
To emphasise, our national broadcasters are not our only broadcasters, so the funding of our media is not dependant on the government. There are commercial broadcasters as well.
Partially. Most of the funding comes from corporate sponsors and individual donors and those tend to be on a station by station or program level. The funding sources for NewsHour, probably the most relevant part of PBS, are listed here for example: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders
Which leads to hilarious results like the Koch Brothers funding NOVA.
That said, Sinclair and the like excluded, the splintering of television networks into individual markets and restrictions on O-and-O stations are world-class exemplary parts of the US media landscape.
Also, what I meant is that put it funding somewhere out of reach of the general taxation pool. Tie it to property taxes, have a licence fee, a foundation with an endowment, a levy on something or other, individual sponsorships, that kind of thing.
Tying the funding and thus existence of your media to a healthy democracy is like giving a horse its own rope, they'll trot off into the sunset never to be seen again.
The Basic Law of Germany, approved by the Western allies in 1949, included telecommunications as a responsibility of the federal government. And so the federal government thought to create a television service to compete with those of the states. The states sued and won in the constitutional court - saying that telecommunications only referred to infrastructure and delivery, definitely not the content (think fascism and communism as to why). The resulting corpse was used by the states as a foundation for a new broadcaster formed through a state treaty.
Germany is part of the EU and thus Frontex. The individual states of Germany organised a sister organisation, ZDF, to the Federal Republic of Germany itself and it isn't.
One reason I mention all this is because we've got a broken media environment unlike Germany here in Australia with a vast amount of media concentration. And the constitutionality of the ABC is based on the constitution saying that telephones and the postal service fall under the responsibility of the federal government. The ABC isn't Australia Post or Telstra. Yet somehow we all just went along with the premise. So this is what happened here in a similar situation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_Files_(Australia) - a police raid, the federal government applying pressure and a chilling effect for all future publications. The top three options in Australia for a 'stop the boats' leak like this would be 1. a broadcaster under a massive _chilling_ _effect_ by the 'stop the boats' government, 2. Rupert Murdoch or 3. Nine, with Costello in charge, who was literally the deputy 'stop the boats' guy. Horrifying.
So when I see comments like
> It's really worrying that there's some concentrated effort to take Frontex down.
No, this leak comes from the constituent states of Germany being concerned by a "superior" power doing things that they haven't been authorised to do. Whether it's the Federal Republic of Germany deciding to start a public broadcaster despite the states (and Allied powers) not having agreed to that being its responsibility or whether it's the European Union starting a military (which it's not allowed to do) it's the same thing. It might be a concentrated effort, whatever - it doesn't matter - because it's a constitutional necessity. This leak here is an extremely important part of the process that all "inferior" constituent parts of something should engage in to keep the greater parts in check.
Something the constituent states of Australia should take more seriously.