Broadcasting to Politicians' Service

In an outrageous act became reality what was expected but journalists and constitutional law exports and many more hoped to prevent: The conservative majority of the board of the public broadcaster ZDF denied extending the contract of chief editor Nikolaus Brender. The board clearly overstepped its competencies since it's not responsible for staffing while the general director Markus Schächter supported his chief editor.

The conservative politicians do not even have a guilty conscience and consider the decision a normal process. Their understanding of separation of powers is totally flawed:

Jahrelang haben in der Tendenz CDU und CSU Wahlen gewonnen, nicht jedoch die SPD - das müsse sich doch im ZDF ausdrücken.
-- In the last years [the conservative parties] CDU and CSU have won the elections while the [left-leaning] SPD has not - this needs to be reflected in the ZDF.

On questions why politicians can choose "their" journalists the chairman of the board, populist and Minister President of Hesse Roland Koch (CDU) asks the counter-question:

Und dass Bischöfe diejenigen aussuchen, die über sie Bericht erstatten, damit haben Sie keine Probleme?
-- Why aren't you concerned about bishops choosing their journalists?

In his arrogance he ignores the fact that the church does not have executive power while it is part of the society - in contrary to politicians. The independence of the ZDF is now questioned of course. The comparison to Italian public broadcasting RAI where Silvio Berlusconi installed suitable journalists is legitimate. Unfortunately, just like Berlusconi, Roland Koch also gets elected repeatedly and despite all the scandals.

I can see only one positive aspect: A constitutional challenge might end the politician's influence on the board. It only takes one third of the members of the Deutscher Bundestag to vote for it. But when a politician of the SPD already speaks out against such a case since it might do harm to the ZDF I get angry. What can be worse than a public broadcasting service without independence from politicians?

Fast Money

What's the media's role in the economy crisis? It's hard to tell and Jon Stewart probably didn't want to provide an in-depth analysis, eventually he is still running a comedy show. It was following rant by Rick Santelli:

How about this, President new administration, why don't you put up a web site to have people vote on the internet as a referendum to see if we really wanna subsidize the loser's mortgages. [..] This is America. How many of you people wanna pay for your neighbor's mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can't pay their bills? Raise the hand! President Obama, are you listening?

that indicted Jon Stewart to have a closer look on poor judgment - not of the homeowners but of the financial experts of CNBC (March 4, 2009):



Less than a week later there was a follow-up (March 9, 2009):



Since the last one particularly picked on Jim Cramer the media made a War of Words between Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer out of it - yet another example on how media works. Remember, Stewart's primary intention was to expose CNBC's financial expert's judgment compared to the losers with their mortgages...

Eventually, Cramer gave in and came to the show 3 days later - and he was pretty much torn limb from limb. This is the unedited interview of March 12, 2009, part I:



Unedited interview of March 12, 2009, part II:



Unedited interview of March 12, 2009, part III:



Yeah, the interview wasn't quite fair, Stewart wanted to smash Cramer, he made him look like a fool and Cramer had hardly any chance to defend. I think it's a great piece of not only entertainment though, Stewart has many points. He is not really blaming media (or CNBC in particular) as reason for the financial crisis but as another piece of the puzzle. And it was only Santelli's blatant remark that increased the height of fall and made it actually interesting for Stewart.

Cui Bono

Just as in the UK (BBC) or in the US (PBS) Germany also has public broadcasting services. (Commercial broadcasting only exists since 25 years in Germany.) The idea is to provide objective quality news and information, as far as possible free from particular political and economical interests.

There are 2 ways of funding: commercials/sponsoring and fees. While separating the public interest in independent news and information from commercial interests of publishers works pretty well for newspapers the approach has been questioned repeatedly for TV stations in the last years, especially in form of Schleichwerbung or product placement.

The fees are collected by an independent authority called GEZ ("Gebühreneinzugszentrale der öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland", “fee collection centre of public-law broadcasting institutions in the Federal Republic of Germany") from every owner of a TV, a radio or (since 2007) even a PC with internet access. The major problem with GEZ is its huge data collection: Whenever somebody moves and registers in the new town the GEZ gets the new address. Furthermore, the GEZ relies on address providers which ends in absurd examples of bureaucracy, when pets get billed or dead people like the famous mathematician Adam Ries whose 450th anniversary of obit is tomorrow.

The model has the advantage of no political influence though. It's only that the commercial influence should also be reduced by not allowing any commercials or sponsoring. This would mean an increase of the fee of less than 10 percent which is more than worth it.

Another massive influence raised my attention lately: Conservative politicians try to prevent that the contract of the chief editor of the Second German TV Channel (ZDF) Nikolaus Brender is renewed. The conservatives have the majority in the governing board of the channel. This raises the first question: Why has any politician influence on the program?

Second question is why they want to prevent Nikolaus Brender. Hesse prime minister Roland Koch started to justify his objection with the reduced numbers of viewers of ZDF news programs - which only applies to all news programs in German TV. In my opinion viewer numbers must not be a primary measurement for quality news - or we end up with yellow press news. That's why public broadcasting should not have a commercial interest with viewer numbers determining the earnings from commercials.

With the argument rebutted Koch switched to criticize Brender's personnel management - obviously this is hard to judge from outside. The ZDF director Markus Schächter wants to keep him though and a lot of prominent journalists of ZDF are supporting him in an open letter objecting the political influence.

Commentators rather think that Brender is simply too independent for the conservative understanding. Vacancies are filled based on qualifications and no longer based on the political camp which raises journalistic excellence. Besides, Brender just won the Hanns-Joachim Friedrichs Price for TV Journalism this week (which of course might just have been a choice to support him as well). Hanns-Joachim Friedrichs most famous quote is:

Einen guten Journalisten erkennt man daran, dass er sich nicht gemein macht mit einer Sache, auch nicht mit einer guten.
-- A good journalist doesn't allow himself to be taken in by any cause, not even a good one.

A news channel can not be measured by its audience and so the points of criticism by the conservatives are invalid. From pretty much every side Brender is supported for his quality journalism which should be the main motive of a chief editor in public broadcasting. Eventually Roland Koch is doing more damage by pursuing political influence to the ZDF than any editor could ever do - or as CEO of Axel Springer newspaper group puts it in the context of the government bailing out news organizations:

To put it in exaggerated terms, even a bankrupt media company is better than one that is funded and controlled by the government. The ZDF is a prime example of what happens when politicians try to appoint editors-in-chief.

This is not yet the end: Brender is not allowed to defend himself in front of the governing board. And to top that, former Bavarian prime minister Edmund Stoiber, also member of the governing board, claims the director of ZDF should take disciplinary actions against all journalists who supported Brender signing the open letter!

Good News for People Who Love Bad News

If you haven't lived hermetically the last year you couldn't have missed it: There is a crisis going on. Hardly anybody doubts it is worse than anything else since WWII. I was impressed though that the same experts that hadn't seen the crisis coming wanted to tell us how bad it's going to be. Starting in October, when the crisis was still a financial crisis, not yet an economical one in Germany (Germany's unemployment rate was the lowest in 16 years) following predictions have been made for the economical growth/ downturn in Germany:

15.10.2008, German government: 0.2 percent.
03.11.2008, EU commission: 0.0 percent.
06.11.2008, IWF: -0.8 percent.
25.11.2008, OECD: -0.9 percent.
05.12.2008, German federal bank: -0.8 percent.
05.12.2008, Deutsche Bank: -4 percent.
10.12.2008, RWI: -2 percent.
11.12.2008, IFO: -2.2 percent.
22.12.2008, IfW: - 2.7 percent.
19.01.2009, EU commission: -2.3 percent.
21.01.2009, German government: -2.25 percent.
28.01.2009, IWF: -2.5 percent.
23.02.2009, Deutsche Bank: -5 percent.

It is like a competition on who makes the worst prediction. I seriously wonder whom are all the bad news supposed to help. Or to say it with German comedian Dieter Nuhr:

Wenn man keine Ahnung hat, einfach mal Fresse halten.

(More polite translation: If you don't have a clue, shut up!)

But there have actually been some good news like unexpected increases in certain indexes based on people's expectations for the future. It's just that the economic institutes don't seem to trust their own surveys. And a report about Germany's export growth in 2008 reads: Export growth is lowest in 5 years! That's how a good news (growth!) is turned into a bad news. And I've always been thinking economy is so much about psychological effects. So shouldn't we interpret every ray of hope as a positive sign rather than turning it down!? I would really like to know if this is a special German mentality issue or if there is the same phenomenon in other parts of the world as well.