Hamburg: Members of the State Broadcasting Council are preparing for the Council meeting.
Image: dpa
Public broadcasting needs to be reformed now before it’s too late. There are plenty of ideas, and the committees are particularly in demand. A guest post.
Dhe public service broadcaster is under massive pressure. The Schlesinger case has increased the pressure on a necessary reform process – but this was already there. Admonitions, also in the broadcasting council of the WDR, to which I belong for the cultural council of North Rhine-Westphalia, fell on deaf ears, such as the proposal for a committee reform written by Jürgen Bremer and myself (FAZ of August 11). People thought they could withdraw from the discussion by saying “Something like that in Berlin can’t happen here”. Minor repair work is no longer enough. A comprehensive review of the structures and tasks of the entire system is now urgently needed. The goal must be to strengthen public service broadcasting in such a way that its opponents have no chance of seriously damaging it. If the system does not take action now, others will take the initiative.
Why does our country need public service broadcasting? Why was it founded? The goal after the Second World War was clear: public service broadcasting should serve to build democracy. That is the mandate to this day, and it is necessary. Even if democracy is consolidated in our country. It is endangered and must be defended again and again against the abuse of freedom of expression by forces that reject democracy and with it the freedom of broadcasting. And these forces are growing. The public must contribute to the indispensable democratic decision-making process. Jürgen Habermas is currently tracking the change in the development of the political public sphere and asks what this means for the future media structure.
