In the draft budget for 2024, the federal government has not allocated any funds for the press funding actually provided for in the coalition agreement. This was confirmed by the Minister of State for Culture and Media (BKM), Claudia Roth (Greens), in an interview with the KNA media service. “It’s not planned,” Roth said. “We as the federal government are working on deciding what direction press funding could have and which department should then have the lead.” But that decision has not yet been made.
“Now it has to be decided whether it will be located in the Ministry of Economic Affairs,” says Roth. Ultimately, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) must decide here. Roth, on the other hand, currently ruled out leadership of her house. “First of all, a concept has to be in place, then the financial and personnel costs have to be clarified.” Only then does the question arise as to who can best implement this concept.
According to initial calculations, Roth estimates the costs of press funding to be very high: “That would be a quarter of our company’s entire budget”. According to the Ministry of Culture and Media, the budget for 2023 is 2.39 billion euros. A quarter of that would be 597.5 million euros. A decision has also not yet been reached on the demand raised by the publishers’ associations for a reduction in the VAT rate for press products from the current seven to zero percent. “All of this comes with the negotiations that have to be conducted with the Federal Ministry of Finance,” said Roth.
NRW media minister warns of damage to democracy
Chancellor Wolfgang Schmidt (SPD) had already declared on June 22 at the congress of the Media Association of the Free Press (MVFP) in Berlin that the federal government could “not yet offer any ready-made solutions” for press funding, and put the industry off to the year 2024.
The North Rhine-Westphalian Media Minister Nathanael Liminski (CDU) criticized the lack of funding and told the SZ: “Despite repeated assurances from the Chancellor and his federal government, one looks in vain for delivery funding in the federal budget draft. Obviously, the federal government has written off the topic for itself and accepts it with approval Buy that the diversity of the German newspaper landscape continues to decrease.” Liminski stressed that there was not only a real economic danger for the publishers, but also “a real political danger for our democracy”. As a reason for this assessment, he pointed out that where the supply of newspapers is no longer guaranteed, “populists have an easy time” unsettling people with disinformation and fake news.