Citizens' assembly on public broadcasting

© Seth Keen / Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

In their coalition agreement published on 4 March 2026, the SPD and CDU in the German state of Brandenburg agreed to hold a Citizens' Assembly on the reform of public service broadcasting. The mini-public is to be based at the state parliament and accompany the ‘necessary reform process’.

The coalition agreement states the following on this topic: "Public service broadcasting will be further reformed, made more efficient and given a clearer mandate. Contributions should remain stable and transparent. Local and regional private media are also important for independent information and opinion-forming."

Goals of the coalition

In order to strengthen media diversity and regional reporting, the following is needed

  • Further structural, administrative and technical reforms, more cooperation and fewer duplicate structures in public broadcasting
  • Focus on the core tasks of information, education and culture
  • More Brandenburg in rbb
  • Digitalisation, compliance with journalistic standards and the promotion of local journalism through a strengthened Berlin-Brandenburg Media Authority

In 2025, an initiative by State Parliament President Ulrike Liedtke (SPD) to hold a state-wide Citizens' Assembly on the topic of voluntary work failed due to resistance from the ranks of the BSW. Critics of mini-publics in the BSW were unfamiliar with the state parliament president's concept and found it unconvincing.

Citizens' Forum in Baden-Württemberg

The Citizens' Assembly planned in Brandenburg would not be the first on a media topic. In 2025, the Citizens' Forum ‘About media. About understanding. About us’ in Baden-Württemberg dealt with the future of the media landscape. Among other things, it called for transparency in the handling of licence fees. It also called for the creation of a European media library.

Public service broadcasting should be classified as ‘critical infrastructure’. In crises or extreme cases (e.g. war, disasters or large-scale failures of digital systems), the population must be able to obtain reliable, comprehensive and independent information.

The Citizens' Forum recommends that civil society set up a nationwide, independent organisation to document the unfair influence of political authorities on the media. Federal policy should promote such an organisation.

Manifesto for reform

In April 2024, employees of ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio published a manifesto for reforming public broadcasting. Among other things, they propose that its supervisory bodies be staffed by citizens selected at random.

‘The new public broadcasting system belongs to the licence fee payers. It therefore goes without saying that they should be involved in the supervisory bodies,’ the manifesto states. The representative composition of the supervisory bodies could be modelled on the composition of citizens' councils, for example. Direct elections, rotation or random selection are possible ways of ensuring that society is represented.

Principles of the programming mandate in danger

In general, employees see the principles and programming mandate as being in danger. They praise the principle of licence fee-funded public broadcasting as an essential pillar of democracy and culture, but call for ‘public broadcasting that takes its audience seriously, allows debate and reflects a broad spectrum of opinion without defamation’.

ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio must ‘return to focusing more strongly on the values and principles laid down in the State Media Treaty and act in accordance with them’. Transparency and the greatest possible citizen participation should be at the centre of this. Only in this way can "public service broadcasting regain acceptance and fulfil its purpose in democratic discourse.

Participation of licence fee payers

The signatories call for a ‘return to programme content that complies with the principles laid down in the State Media Treaty, such as diversity of opinion, plurality and balance’; the participation of licence fee payers in media policy, financial and personnel decisions‘ and ’a participation process that involves all relevant associations and initiatives campaigning for change in public service media".

Image licence: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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