Euronews has had a new editorial director for the past 3 weeks and he comes from Axel Springer’s German tabloid Bild.
Quote via Politico (ironically—owned by Springer):
“Strunz declarations on Twitter are worrying because this is not what you’d expect from the boss of Euronews, especially when he applauds [far right German party] AfD results as a sign of functioning democracy,” src
After Trump’s victory, Euronews shared, uncommented, a congratulations video from Orbán to Trump on its Instagram feed.
There is now an open letter from the Union representatives voicing concern about the staff’s journalistic freedoms (in French).
They’re in fact forbidden from broadcasting within Germany, doubly so: First off they’re not public but state TV. secondly, they’re federal while broadcasting is state prerogative.
Expect their editorial policy to align with Germany’s foreign policy, and there’s some selection and framing going on occasionally in the sense of “we’ll report about a problem but only in the context of it being addressed” kind of deal. They’ll report about arguments within Germany, but they won’t start any. When it comes to raw factuality they’re highly reliable.
I think the ARD membership is just about access to each other’s programming, there’s zero overlap when it comes to editorial staff, running the channel etc. That would be highly unconstitutional.
DW isn’t actually banned from broadcasting in Germany but I don’t believe they broadcast at all anymore, since the target audience is international. But regardless, yeah they are a high quality channel with factual reporting.
Well there’s no explicit ban there’s simply no Rechtsgrundlage. Also, a decision of the constitutional court which I can’t be bothered to unearth now regarding the establishment of the ZDF, which was initially supposed to be a federal broadcaster because the ARD was too left (according to the CDU).
All those stations, radio or TV, broadcasting in the whole republic (ARD, ZDF, DLF) are based on inter-state treaties because only the states can set such a thing up. It gets even more complicated because originally DW was a short-wave station set up by the ARD, then it became fully federal, now it’s still federal but also part of the ARD, but as said doesn’t broadcast domestically. Internet doesn’t count, there, just actual airwaves.
The target audience is all abroad, both the diaspora (hence German language programming) as well as general foreign propaganda. As in “broadcast the German view of things”. Similar to BBC World, France24, Voice of America and… RT. Just that RT sucks donkey ass, even more than VoA, because the Russian regime does suck even more than the CIA. Can’t divorce those broadcasters from the states running them.