Robert W. McChesney: Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Zur Qualität der Medienkontrolle: Ergebnisse einer Befragung deutscher Rundfunk- und Medienräte

This article presents the results of a survey among German media supervisors (members of supervising boards in public broadcasting stations and state media institutions). Given the increasing commercialization and internationalization of television, the supervising boards play a crucial part in assessing the quality of programs. From among 940 German supervisors, 364 took part in the survey, which covered the individual role conceptions of respondents as well as their attitudes towards quality criteria for television. Results suggest that both the supervisors’ amount of television use and the types of programs they prefer is clearly different from patterns in the population. This, along with the observation that supervisors often criticize what they saw privately, suggests (given the diversity of programs) that too much might be expected of them. Media supervisors do heed quality criteria in their work, but these probably do not correspond to other groups’ criteria, and especially not to the general population’s. To conclude, suggestions are discussed to improve the system of supervising programs by important social groups.