The public broadcasters' quiet power grab

Should ARD & Co. be allowed to produce online newspapers?

Photo by Frank Okay on Unsplash

Dear Reader,

Cast your mind back a couple of decades to a world in which we still needed to turn on the radio or buy a newspaper to find out what was going on in the world.

It was a time when there was a clear delineation of power. The written word was the exclusive domain of private publishers; the radio waves were largely controlled by public broadcasters.

That wasn't such a bad state of affairs. The private media need to flog newspapers, meaning that they tend to over-dramatise everything but are fine-tuned to the issues that the public cares about. Public broadcasters don't need to worry about sales, which makes them more measured, or more elitist, depending on your perspective.

What would have happened back then if the BBC, ABC or any other public broadcaster had announced that it was moving into the world of print journalism? Imagine what you would have thought if you’d seen The BBC competing for space on the newsstands next to The Guardian, or NPR nex…