Germany

[DE] Amendment to the Deutsche-Welle Act

IRIS 2004-6:1/15

Rainer Großhans

Institute of European Media Law (EMR), Saarbrücken/Brussels

On 24 March 2004, the Federal government accepted the bill on the amendment to the Deutsche Welle Act.

The aim of this Act is to give a modern task profile to the public broadcasting station Deutsche Welle (DW), broadcasting radio programmes abroad. The primary objective is to present Germany abroad in its entire diversity and encourage understanding of and exchange between cultures and nations. The Act forbids any content-related standards in order to reinforce autonomy and journalistic independence. The new bill introduces a self-regulation system to enable DW to transparently discharge its stipulated tasks. This involves the participation of the Federal German Government, the Federal Parliament (Bundestag) and interested members of the public who are given the opportunity to express their suggestions regarding task scheduling. With the newly implemented assessment obligation, the broadcasting station will additionally keep verifying how the aims have been reached. For this purpose DW has been granted a "reliable financial planning foundation" for a period of four years. Furthermore, DW is explicitly enabled to discharge its tasks also through on-line offers in addition to radio and TV broadcasting. The station is additionally obliged to cooperate with other national and foreign public broadcasting stations.