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The "Tagesschau" Controversy

 

For a long time since the 1950s, information media in the Western sphere have largely been defined by a competitive relationship between the television industry, radio broadcasting, and the press. This triadic constellation has been rendered more complicated in the context of the 1990s’ digital revolution, due to a novel determining factor that emerged in the field: computer technologies and internet services quickly entered the media landscape, engendering fundamental changes in the market that would fully develop within the next decade, and consequently force traditional media to adapt. Thus, with the rise of internet services and an increased interest in digital content, television stations and press companies in the 21^st century have been struggling to meet the shifting demands of the media market, creating new offerings for their customers that might correspond to the changing usage patterns and consumer needs. In 2010, the German public broadcasting station ARD made an effort to take up the challenge, introducing a mobile application that would provide videos and other material related to the channel’s popular news programme “Tagesschau”. This endeavor, however, was met with controversy, as several publishing houses and press companies claimed that the online application would amount to a distortion of competition in the field of media production, enabling the TV channel to delve into heretofore unauthorized domains of journalistic practice. As a result of the legal dispute between the conflicting parties, the state court of Köln has recently set out rules for the organization of online services by public broadcasters, demanding that their respective offerings must show a relatedness to the televised programmes and avoid resemblance to classical print media. The mentioned example shows how in Germany, the challenge of digitization has been met by a prominent public TV channel, raising questions as to the difficulties that arise as traditional media have to renegotiate their responsibilities in a digital age.