150,000 Germans left Germany in 2006

A large portion of US health care spending is through Medicaid, Medicare, and other governmental sources- I'll try to find out how much. Business that provide health insurance to their employees get significant tax breaks.

EDIT: according to Wikipedia, it's 44%. That's roughly 860 billion USD, or over 6% of GDP.

Both employers and employees each pay 1.45% of the employee's gross salary in Medicare taxes (Medicare is for those 65 and over).

In the US about 16% of GNP is spent on health.
Mostly for the upper classes.
At the other end the US is truly third world - peri-natal mortality etc. like Upper Volta.
So, you have the best and and the worst.
Not a good example for the rest of the world - even the US middle classes
live in permanent fear of chronic illness.
Not a problem in most EU countries (in Old (civilised) Europe).

The GEZ is like the BBC, which faces massive critisism over politicizing it's content despite being (unlike PBS in the US) *mandatorially* financed. Any money confiscated from people backed up by the force of law is a tax ... and there's your answer to "What exactly would they threaten them with?": "We'll stop enforcing GEZ collection rules ... or kick you off our satellite". The argument that dishes are all pointed at 18.2 is specious, seeing as multiple broadcast satellites can flock together in close proximity. It's just a lot easier to ride along on the Astra unit that has been put up at taxpayer expense.

The wording on "financial independence" was clearly stuck in to assuage fears that Germany would ever set up another Hitler Channel.

ZDF is almost as notorious an anti-American propaganda outlet as this.

Is anti-American propaganda a criminal offense ... or a sin ?

You're either with us or against us...

Do you think they are anti US or anti-Bush though?

No. But I always get an earful from Germans about how British and US media keep dredging up WWII documentaries that ignore how enlightened modern german culture is. And if I hear one more thing about how mean we all were to the indians ... talk about the pot calling the kettle black! "Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?" -- Matthew 7:3 Gee whiz, I'm not even religious whatsoever, but this place has me so depressed I'm quoting bible verses :-(

Merry Christmas!

eh? How is ZDF meant to be "anti-American"?

There is critique that one could make against fee funded public broadcasters in Germany.
But the main forces out to undermine them are people like Mr Murdoch, Mr Berlusconi and whoever owns Sat1/Pro7 etc.
What a co-incidence!

Big German private companies such as the ones you mention and this make some inroads.

Personally, I think most TV is crap ... but millions of others are glued to it, and have their heads pumped full of propaganda on my dime! My young children kids got to see this live on publically-financed Kinderkanal (an ARD/ZDF JV) before I cut the cable on the German 19.2 dish and went exclusively British 28.5. I guess they just wanted to keep the "anal' in "Kinderkanal."

I think we will have a definitive answer once Bush leaves office, and a new president will be in office in less than 13 months. It will be especially interesting to see what the attitude is toward the US over the course of a Democratic President's four-year term. I don't think President Obama or President Hillary Clinton will be "feeling the love", at least not for long.

There are critiques to be made of publicly funded broadcasting in Germany but they send stuff that the private boys don't and at a higher quality.
Jesus, even give me Bauern 3 Fernshen any day rather than RTL

You can be Mainz on the S-bahn in 30 minutes. You do realise Karenval is a BIG cultural event along the Rhine?
You do realise that the norms of acceptable behaviour are bent during Karneval?
You do realise that the floats are made by the carneval clubs, made up of ordinary men and women?

It was quite a famous float, in an event that is central to the culture.

Why shouldn't it be on public television?

For children?

I give up against the onslaught of Euroweenies hell-bent on taking the "child" out of "childhood."

How long have ARD and ZDF been around, and how long have they been funded by TV license fees?

But you'd understand the danger of describing things as Anti-American when they are quite possibly only anti the policies of the current administation? There are plenty of people who post on this board who complain about the treatment they get as Americans in Europe even though they also think Bush is as big an arse as many of the rest of the world. Why is that? The inability to break the political leadership of a country from it's peoples in peoples heads.

At least 25% of those covers are about the small idiot and not about the US. I'd hope you would agree that the one about Torture in Iraq any right minded human being would agree is something that should be reported and abored as well?

So let's be more anti bush and pro Americans.

Pas, there are a significant number of posts here on TT, to give one example, which are critical of the US in a very virulent way and have nothing whatsoever to do with Bush. These posters can obviously say what they wish about the US, but what they are saying is not about Bush per se, or is mostly about other people or events that have nothing to do with Bush. Such comments and thinking indicate that there is anti-Americanism quite independent of GWB.

An ongoing criticism of US policies over the last X periods of an Administration is perhaps an indicaton that whatever the president, whatever the party, there's not a whole lot of choice on offer.
Though I did see by chance this evening a Republican (outside) candidate who wants to end US military support for Israel...

German' public broadcasting as it now roughly is was established by the WW2 Allies and you can see the British influence.
It deliberately made the system states based and at arm's length from the politicians.

What is suitable for children to see on television is a cultural norm.
There are differences.
Many if not all our puritans left Plymouth.

I can't completely agree with your reasoning, but I do agree that there is not that much room for Democrats and Republicans to disagree on a number of issues. Some of that is outside their control. Good topic for another thread.
The main significance of your comment here is that it supports what I am saying about the Europeans' (and many others for that matter) opinions about the US being primarily independent of GWB.
This will become evident by the end of 2009, at the latest.


That sounds like something Ron Paul would say. I think he would end up in the far corner of the lower right hand quadrant on the politicalcompass.org political spectrum. He is someone you could describe as an "isolationist".


In other words, it very much predates the rise of Berlusconi and Murdoch as media moguls, thus has nothing to do with them.

Yes. which is why in modern UK, Germany and Italy there are moves against public boadcasting.

Has it's downsides, but.

When I lived in the US, I would often watch the Deutsche Welle Tagesschau broadcasts in English, German, and Spanish. Broadcasts shaded towards the government of that time (Schröder) and the English-language broadcast was often downright anti-US. I think editorial independence is a unicorn because everyone has a bias (see the BBC admissions) so to allow some to use the state's alleged impartiality to cloak theirs has some nasty side effects, and will inevitably cause the rise of rival media as a counterweight.

Rivaal broadcasting is there primarily for one thing: to make money.
But I'd argue that a functioning civil society needs broadcasting that isn't simply about profit.

Sounds to me like an argument for having people read more of (and a greater variety of) books and newspapers.

Does anyone know what the ratings are for ARD and ZDF vis-a-vis privately-owned TV German-language channels?

Again, two problems with your theory: The government can't just stop enforcing GEZ collection rules since "Rundfunkfreiheit" is part of the constitution and the GEZ does not own or control Astra SES. If you really think those "Auswanderer" shows look the way they do because the German government is instructing private broadcasters to badmouth emigration, you need a head-check. This is not the Soviet Union.

German public broadcasting is SES Astra's largest paying customer, so that's a pretty good start. Also, (straight from their most recent SEC filing) "SES Global will be owned in excess of 25 percent by non-U.S. individuals and entities, including the governments of Germany and Luxembourg." Remember, de facto government entity Deutsche Telekom owns 16.67% of SES Astra "Deutsche Telekom, a German company, is expected to be the largest holder of Class A shares, holding an equity interest of 12.6 percent and a voting interest of 10.1 percent in SES Global. The German government holds a 45 percent interest in Deutsche Telekom, which gives it an attributable 5.67 percent equity interest and a 4.54 percent voting interest in SES Global (based on multiplying the 45 percent German government interest in Deutsche Telekom by Deutsche Telekom's 12.6 percent equity interest and 10.1 percent voting interest, respectively, in SES Global." Also, in 2006 SES Astra bought NDSatcom, which handles German military and government communications.

Politics can be subtle: 'We have 10% voting control in the satellite company that carries all your programming ... now, can't you do us a solid and put a bit more lipstick on the pig for us?"

I'll reserve judgement on the Soviet Union comparison ... but find it ironic that while the Russians and the Chinese have given up on commmunism, Germany is the only place on earth looking to revive it.

So just to recap, you're saying private broadcasters intentionally show emigration in a bad light because the German government is using its minority share in Deutsche Telekom (~15% direct, ~15% indirect through KfW) to pressure them, DT in turn uses their minority share (~10%) in SES Global to pressure them, SES Global threatens their customers to kick them off their satellites unless they change their shows about emigration to show a disproportionate amount of unhappy emigrants.

How do you not see how ridiculous this theory sounds? Even if you ignore the fact that there's a 1000:1 chance that any of this would work without being made public, that all parties involved would risk disastrous consequences and that all of them would be breaking a dozen of laws, why would the German government even care about a bunch of irrelevant shows on second or third tier channels?

1. Indirectly. It's likely a bit like when any government entity sends a strong "don't bite the hand that feeds you" message.
2. The German government is so mobbed up that they don't care about even bigger stuff such as Nord Stream, so why should they be remotely concerned about the ramifications of keeping their bread and circuses for the Wohnsilo-residing masses in place?