VDZ Welcomes Restrictions on ARD and ZDF’s Online Press

Archive notice: This article was originally published on April 1, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.

Rather, the draft interstate treaty expands ARD and ZDF’s online remit towards the so-called third pillar by permitting videos and audio contributions independent of broadcasts. Only in the area of text-based offerings (electronic press) must ARD and ZDF continue to restrict themselves to accompanying programmes, a requirement defined more clearly than before by the wording “programme-related” and thus in line with the EU state-aid decision.

“To describe maintaining the self-evident ban on fully fledged public-service reading media as a muzzle, as suspect of censorship or even merely as a massive obstruction to public-service television turns the true situation on its head,” said Christoph Fiedler, Head of Media Policy at VDZ. “A public-service press is no more necessary online than offline, and also threatens the financing of the diverse private online press, which has so far been successful but remains fragile. Equally detached from reality and unrealistic is the notion that ARD and ZDF would have no development opportunities with an online offering focused on moving images and audio contributions.”

Schächter’s further accusation that limiting text-based offerings to those related to programmes violates ARD and ZDF’s development guarantee is also incorrect, the association says. On the contrary, a recent legal opinion by Prof. Dr Hubertus Gersdorf demonstrated that, conversely, text and (still) image offerings from ARD and ZDF that go beyond a marginal activity accompanying programmes are incompatible with the Basic Law. A restriction such as that in the current draft is therefore not merely permissible but constitutionally necessary.