This case study report, ‘Does media policy promote media freedom and independence? The case of Germany’ is the second report on Germany from the European Union-funded MEDIADEM project. While the first report, the ‘Background information report. The case of Germany’, published in October 2010, provides an overview of the current media landscape in Germany, this report focuses on media policy’s processes and actors and their impact on

the promotion of media freedom and independence.

The objective of this report is to study the policy processes and the formulation or implementation of regulatory tools and policy instruments that either promote or constrain the development of free and independent media.

We have placed the core notion of this report, free and independent media, in the context of democratic societies. This is because media freedom and independence do not constitute absolute terms without any relationship to the environment the media works in. The MEDIADEM project is based on the assumption that the primary, overarching role of the media in a democratic society is to function as an agent of information and public debate that

facilitates the functioning of democracy. The terms are thus employed in relation to the media’s function in a democracy. It is clear from the outset that media freedom and independence are prone to various constraints. They can stem from the political sphere, from economic actors, from the media operators, or from the audience itself and will be illustrated here.

This report is based mainly on empirical research with reference to legal acts, judgments, parliamentary motions and other parliamentary documents, media experts’ studies and research reports, statements of media operators and journalist associations, twenty-five expert interviews as well as supplementary academic literature. The information gathered was critically analysed and contextualised within the media policy discourse. The first chapter provides an overview of the values and actors at work in media policy

formation and implementation to outline the broad field of the German media policy landscape. These values and actors are then succinctly analysed against the background of the concept of a free and independent media. While it became clear during the research that the multitude of national and European actors and media policy forums renders it difficult to present a coherent picture, some underlying basic currents could be carved out. Media policy

processes of structural regulation to engender free and independent democratic discourses are addressed in the second chapter, followed by an analysis of content regulation in the third chapter. The difficult coexistence of public service and private broadcasting, the economic situation faced by print media and the technical, media policy, and legal repercussions brought by the advent of the Internet are also illustrated. The report concludes with a discussion of the conditions of the journalistic profession and their role in fostering or constraining free and independent media and media competency initiatives in Germany.

MEDIADEM is a European research project which seeks to understand and explain the factors that promote or conversely prevent the development of policies supporting free and independent media.

The project combines a country-based study in Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey and the UK with a comparative analysis across media sectors and various types of media services. It investigates the configuration of media policies in the aforementioned countries and examines the opportunities and challenges generated by new media services for media freedom and independence. Moreover, external pressures on the design and implementation of state media policies, stemming from the European Union and the Council of Europe, are thoroughly discussed and analysed.

Project title: European Media Policies Revisited: Valuing and Reclaiming Free and Independent

Media in Contemporary Democratic Systems

Project duration: April 2010 - March 2013

EU funding: approx. 2.65 million Euro

Grant agreement: FP7-SSH-2009-A no. 244365