Kształtowanie się polityki medialnej (Medienpolitik) rządu RFN w latach 1949-1989

Abstract

The mass media became in the 20th c. and particularly after the Second World War, an important element of every state organism, which is why the creation of the conditions and principles according to which the mass communication should take place is the aim of a given state’s political actions called a media policy. In the case of the Federal Republic of Germany, Medienpolitik became an integral part of the political parties’ and the gevermment’s programmes at the beginning of the 1970s. Before that, various actions concerning the mass media had a provisional nature, and were motivated by specific political objectives. The main purpose of the present work is to tree the evolution of the media policy of the Govermment of the Federal Republic of Germany from the moment that state came into being to the beginning of the process of reunification. In the author’s opinion, this evolution consisted in a passage from the obvious étatisme and centralism characteristic of Konrad Adenauer’s administration to the policy of the 1980s which followed the principles of federalism and decentralisation in the course of programming and implementing the state’s media policy. As regards the problems that were dealt with, we observe a passage from the policy aimed at preventing, or, at preventing, or, at least, weakening various undesirable tendencies (such as the concentration of the press market in the 1960s and 70s) to a policy focused on popularising certain new trends so that their positive aspects are made use of (here belongs the introduction of new technologies of communication in the 1980s). This reorientation was connected with transformations concerning the use of the instruments of the state’s Medienpolitik. Apart from legal regulations, various forms of dialogue with other subjects of media policy and the co-operation with private firms based on a common economic interest started to be regarded as legitimate instruments. A chronological presentation of the stages of the development of the federal government’s media policy is preceded, in the present work, by an account of the achievements of the German media studies in researching the relations between the zone of politics and that of mass communication. Owing to this the reader may more easily understand the complexities, interrelations, and also the basic notions of media policy. Some space in the present book is also devoted to a presentaion of the historical, legal, constitutional, and instututional conditions of the state’s Medienpolitik. This is because the federal govermment had to construct its media policy on the ruins of the centralised media system of the Third Reich, and on the fundations of the federal system in radio and television created by the vectorious Allied Powers. Equally imnportant were also the consequences of the political system of the new state in which the legislative powers concerning the press, radio, and television were give to the governments of the German Lander. This solution substantially limited the possibilities of the federal government in this respect. The present work’s main thesis, however, is that, in spite of these rather difficult conditions, the federal government became, in the discussed period, the main organiser of the media policy in the FRG. It made use, in its actions, of various means and methods the significance and practical value of which goes well beyond the chronological limits of the present book and the political situation specific to the German state.