ARD and ZDF public broadcasters

ARD and ZDF are Public Broadcasting Services. Their supervision bodies and boards of directors include representatives of political parties, trade unions, non-governmental and social associations, as well as representatives of different religious denominations. With a total annual budget amounting to €8.3 billion (US$ 9.2 billion), the public broadcasting services are among the major actors in the Germany’s media sphere. They are financed through a very unpopular obligatory public contribution that now amounts to €17.50 per household per month. The non-transparent system of money distribution in public broadcasting constantly provokes allegations of corruption and misuse. It particularly concerns an immediately interconnected network of production companies and service providers that constantly place orders to one another.

The estimated number of the contribution evaders amounts to many millions.

A consortium of public broadcasters in Germany branded as ARD with its TV and radio stations in the German states such as WDR, state-run national radio broadcaster Deutschlandradio, "German Second Channel" ZDF and international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (with its offices abroad).

The ARD’s Tagesschau (Daily News) and the ZDF’s Heute (Today) news programs are generally thought to be the most influential political news media on the German television, although, in the recent decades, they’ve had to struggle with constantly falling viewer numbers. Between 1992 and 2015, the number of the viewers of the ARD’s Tagesschau has fallen from 8,33 million to 5 million and the number of the ZDF’s Heute viewers has decreased from 7 million to almost 3,5 million.

The ARD’s and ZDF’s talk-shows take the role of the "media substitute of the parliament." A range of leading political figures and carefully-selected experts is rotated in various revolving combinations in such shows as Anne Will, Menschen bei Maischberger (People and Politics), Günther Jauch, Hart aber fair (‘Hard but fair’) with Frank Plasberg and Maybrit Illner that are altogether aired every day. Discussions in these shows are tightly guided by the hosts and pre-selected video clips to follow the desired scenario and remonstrative opinions that stand out from the mainstream are scarce. Political talk-shows form the most important public forum for political discourse in Germany.

Since 2013, Tom Buhrow has been head of Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR). In 1990s, Buhrow worked as a correspondent of ARD in Washington and later — as a head of ARD’s office in Washington. He took over this position in 2002 from Claus Kleber, who now edits ZDF’s Heute journal. In 2006, Buhrow became an editor of the ARD’s Tagesthemen (Topics of the Day) program. Just like other media top-figures from public broadcasters, Buhrow receives generous fees for his appearances at corporate events. This activity has provoked criticism, with critics claiming that his "side-line job" represents a potential conflict of interest and compromises the independence of his opinion.

Since 2012, Thomas Bellut has been head of ZDF, thus being responsible for the entire program of Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (the German Second Channel). Additionally, he is the chairman of the governing board of Deutschlandradio (the German Radio).

In 2007, ZDF manipulated the outcome of the Voting-Show "Unsere Besten" (Our Best) that eventually presented the results corresponding to the mainstream. Thomas Bellut was reportedly aware of these manipulations.

Claus Kleber has a PhD in law and since the 1980s has had close ties with the US, where he also presented his thesis. Kleber worked as a lawyer before becoming a legal expert. Since 2003, he has been anchor of the Heute journal and one of the key personalities on German TV. In 2007, Kleber declined an offer to become editor-in-chief of Der Spiegel.

Kleber is a former member of the supervisory board of a fund run by a US-German association Atlantik-Brücke (Altantic Bridge) as well as a member of the supervisory board of the Berlin’s branch office of the US think tank Aspen Institute.

The system of public broadcasting was created in Germany after WWII and patterned after the BBC. The declared aim was to promote democratization of post-war West Germany. The public broadcasting services in Germany lay claim of being both independent and separated from the state. However, due to personal ties between the media and political elite as well as the interference of different networks and interest groups, this claim gives rise to doubts. For example, Steffen Seibert, a long-standing news anchor of the pro-government Heute program, was appointed the head of the German governmental press- and information-agency in 2010, becoming the official mouthpiece of the German chancellor.

The ZDF’s satiric program ‘Die Anstalt’ that uncovered the binding of German media with the transatlantic interest groups went viral in the internet.

The executive editor of the weekly Die Zeit, Josef Joffe, even filed a lawsuit against the program, although he lost the case.

Claus Kleber, the news anchor of the ZDF’s Heute journal, is at the same time a member of the supervisory board of a foundation of the transatlantic lobby organization Atlantik-Brücke as well as of the Aspen Institute. His interview with the Head of Siemens, Joe Kaeser, is believed to be one of the most infamous and scandalous. This interview took place in March 2014 after Kaeser had met with the Russian president Vladimir Putin to discuss the Siemens concern’s deals with Russia.

Frank Schirrmacher, the former executive co-editor of the German Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung, reproached Kleber for "self-staging." Jakob Augstein, the executive editor of the leftist weekly Der Freitag and the son of the Spiegel’s founder, Rudolf Augstein, denounced the interview as an "interrogation."

In the course of the extremely one-sided and in part openly propagandist coverage of the Ukrainian conflict, during which the German public broadcasting media often worked with numerous fake photos, an association called Ständige Publikumskonferenz der öffentlich-rechtlichen Medien e.V. (Permanent open conference of the public broadcasting media) was set up. This association was aimed at critically analyzing and investigating the work of the broadcasting services. Due to its regular complaints against different media programs, the voluntary association has recently approved itself among the public as a sort of "David against Goliath" organization and has often angered the heads of the big broadcasting companies.

The media watchdog Propagandaschau (‘Propaganda review’) also exposes daily manipulations and disinformation in the German media. Although the blog monitors the whole German media sphere, the public broadcasting services commands a dramatically large part in its reports.

In August 2015, a journalist from the German state-run broadcaster Deutsche Welle intervened directly into the Ukrainian conflict, inciting a rebel commander to shoot at Ukrainian army positions on camera for the sake of action shots, eventually provoking a firefight between the two sides.