Inhabitants: 83.13 million (June 2021)
Households: 40.7 million (2021)
Average household size: 2 people (2021)
Largest denominations: Catholic (291,000 people), Protestant (261,000 people), Muslim (3,71,000 people), as of 2021
Big cities: Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne
Form of government: federal republic
Head of State: Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD, since 19 March 2017)
Head of the government: Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD, since 8 December 2021)
EU-member since: 1958 (then EC)
Unemployment rate: 5,4% (2021)
State indebtedness: $2.3 trillion (2021)
Gross domestic product: 4.26 trillion US dollars (2021)

Advertisement costs total: approx. 38 billion euros (2021)
Television viewing time per inhabitant: 213 minutes per day (2021)
Large media and communication companies: Bertelsmann, ARD, ProSiebenSat.1, Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, Axel Springer, Hubert Burda Media, ZDF, Bauer Media, Ströer, Funke Media Group
Broadcasting fees: 18.36 euros per month and household (2021)

History and profile*

Germany is characterized by a strong regionalization of the media industry, with the four leading locations being Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, and Munich. Half of the total daily newspaper circulation is accounted for by regional titles, and of the ten largest media corporations, only Axel Springer's headquarters is located in the capital. Compared to the Anglo-Saxon system, a commercial media culture developed late in Germany. In the 19th century, state media policy fluctuated between liberal and repressive phases. Only after press censorship was abolished in the German Empire in 1874 did the political class begin to develop more subtle forms of influence. Bismarck, who had a largely authoritarian understanding of the role of the press, supported selected government editorial offices with news, thus making them "docile," as he called it. Money was also paid to individual "skilled correspondents."

The "stab-in-the-back" legend after 1918 included the view that a lack of propaganda and the failure of the national press were at least partly responsible for the defeat in the First World War. This was not without consequences for the media policy of the Weimar Republic. The fall of the monarchy did not bring unrestricted freedom of the press. Through targeted use of criminal law, the government was able to continue to take action against undesirable journalists. However, publishers such as Hugenberg, Scherl, Mosse, and Ullstein had political clout and could no longer be easily controlled. The same applied to the party press. From 1930 onwards, emergency decrees made it possible to ban newspapers without a court order.

After Chancellor von Papen, during his brief term in office in 1932, had already paved the way for the subsequent Gleichschaltung (coordination) – including that of radio – by the National Socialists, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, in the "Third Reich," for the first time, implemented an integrated strategy. Cinema, radio, and newspapers were controlled by the state or placed under the control of the party. By 1944, 80 percent of the total circulation of the remaining newspapers belonged to the NSDAP press conglomerate. By this time, the bourgeois newspapers, which had initially been granted more apparent than actual freedom of movement, had been liquidated, most recently the "Frankfurter Zeitung."

The period of the Allied occupation of Germany was characterized by contradictory developments in the western and Soviet zones. In the West, a free press emerged, initially governed by Allied licensing and censorship, and a public broadcasting system organized at the state level, independent of state ownership. An Anglo-Saxon-style understanding of journalism, committed to fairness and the separation of news and commentary, was promoted and taught to young journalists.

Publishing personalities with their own unique visions of the future of the republic played a significant role in shaping the media structure. Rudolf Augstein with "Spiegel," Henri Nannen, and Gerd Bucerius with "Stern" and "Die Zeit" magazines shaped a left-liberal journalism and thus founded the so-called "Hamburg Cartel." Opposing them was Axel Springer, the economically most successful publisher of the post-war period. Through his political stance and journalistic approach, his publishing house contributed significantly to the escalation of the student unrest of the late 1960s. The Michel Commission (1964-1967, named after its chairman, a former ministerial director in the Federal Ministry of Economics, Elmar Michel) and the Günther Commission (1967/1968, named after its chairman and then head of the Federal Cartel Office, Eberhard Günther), both appointed by the Bundestag, also belong in this context. They discussed the journalistic and economic relationship between television and press publishers. Until 1984, the “principle of journalistic separation of powers” remained in place: private press on the one hand, public broadcasting on the other.

In the Soviet occupation zone, and from 1949 onward in the GDR, the media were placed at the service of communist ideology. In the 1980s, the press density there was one of the highest in the world, with 39 daily newspapers and a total circulation of nine million. However, the press, radio, and television were supposed to be "instruments of the party for implementing its revolutionary policies." State organs issued detailed directives and language regulations in the form of "recommendations" that had to be strictly followed.

After the accession of the "new federal states" to the Federal Republic, only a few of the GDR's media survived. This includes the SED's central organ, "Neues Deutschland," which is now 50 percent owned by the Left Party. This makes it the only party in Germany to have a daily newspaper. The SED's regional newspapers, however, were sold to West German publishing groups, and the television stations were dissolved or transferred to public-law institutions by virtue of Article 36 of the 1991 Unification Treaty. While political parties have also acquired shares in former GDR newspapers, media policy has been limited primarily to television and, at least since the mid-2000s, to the regulation of the internet in the form of network policy.

Print and online media

Before the Nazis seized power in 1933, the German newspaper market was dominated by publishers such as Hugenberg, Scherl, Mosse, and Ullstein. Because the Nazi regime had more than sabotaged the German media market through its Gleichschaltung (coordination) measures and bans, further major upheavals occurred after the end of the Second World War. For example, the Jewish Ullstein family, which had owned one of Germany's largest publishing houses, the Ullstein Group, before its forced sale by the Nazi dictatorship, regained control of the company in 1952, but was unable to build on its previous successes. Like other German publishers, Ullstein was confronted with the largely destroyed structures and networks of the German media landscape. Another successful publisher, Axel Springer, stood out. He acquired a stake in Ullstein in 1956—the same year the first issue of "Bild am Sonntag" was published. In 1959, Axel Springer Verlag acquired a majority stake in the Ullstein Group, including the daily newspapers BZ (Berliner Tageszeitung) and Berliner Morgenpost. Both newspapers are still published today—the latter now belongs to the Funke Media Group.

Over the years, Axel Springer Verlag has grown into one of Germany's media giants and, for a long time, the most important German newspaper publisher. With the national Sunday newspapers "Bild am Sonntag" and "Welt am Sonntag," the company was unrivaled until the launch of the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung" in 2001. The following years were marked by major upheavals. For example, Springer's regional and local newspaper business, long considered important, was further downsized in the summer of 2013 with the sale of the "Hamburger Abendblatt" and the "Berliner Morgenpost" to the Funke Group. However, the publisher will initially continue to provide journalistic content for the sold newspapers—in the long term, "Welt" could supply content to all Funke newspapers. Critics therefore fear that the deal will significantly limit press diversity in Germany.

The dominance of Axel Springer Publishing is also reflected in the reach of German daily newspapers. With an average of 5.51 million readers per issue in 2022, "Bild" is by far the most successful – and that's for a tabloid. Considering many other European countries, which are primarily distinguished by quality journalism in the top rankings, this is quite a rarity. The second-placed "Süddeutsche Zeitung" with 1.23 million readers and the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" behind it with 840,000 readers seem far behind in comparison. The conservative newspaper "Die Welt," also published by Springer, still reaches 360,000 readers per issue. The business newspaper "Handelsblatt" ranks even higher with 500,000 readers. "Handelsblatt" belongs to the Handelsblatt publishing group, a subsidiary of the Georg von Holtzbrinck publishing group.

Fig. I: Reach of the largest daily newspapers per issue in Germany in 2022 (in million)

Source: Weidenbach (2022)

Like many other European countries, the print media has been in a crisis for several years that seems unlikely to be overcome. The proportion of newspaper readers in Germany has recently declined continuously. However, as a result of digitalization, many former print media consumers switched to the online equivalents of many newspapers by the 2010s at the latest. The different distribution within the various age groups is striking. While in 2021 the proportion of those over 70 who read a newspaper several times a week was estimated at 27.2 percent, for example, it was only 6.5 percent for those aged 20 to 29. This could have fatal consequences for publishing houses in the relatively near future. Across all age groups, an almost continuously declining proportion of newspaper readers can be observed. In 2021, the proportion of those who read a newspaper several times a week was only 17.4 percent.

Fig. II: Share of print newspaper readers in Germany 2021 by age group

Source: Pawlik (2021)

Broadcasting

In the 1920s, broadcasting policy, which still dominates today, emerged alongside press policy. Radio broadcasting in what was then the German Reich dates back to October 23, 1923. "Funk-Stunde Berlin," the first German broadcasting corporation, began broadcasting its radio program for the first time at 8:00 p.m. that day in what was then the northern German broadcasting district. In 1924, the expansion of radio broadcasting was further advanced—the goal was to cover the entire Reich with transmitters each with a range of 150 km. A total of eight additional radio stations were opened in the German Reich in 1924: transmitters in Leipzig, Frankfurt am Main, Munich, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Breslau, Königsberg, and Münster.

The new medium of radio was required to provide so-called circulation news, which was provided by a central news agency, the "Gesellschaft Mobilfunker Dienst AG" (Dradag), or by the state governments. Until the end of Brüning's chancellorship in May 1932, the Reich governments were more interested in controlling broadcasting than in actively using it for political purposes. The subsequent Reich Chancellor, von Papen, nationalized the broadcasting companies during his only six-month term in office, thus paving the way for the later National Socialist Gleichschaltung (coordination), which also affected broadcasting.

It was only after the Second World War and in the wake of democratization by the Western Allies that today's public broadcasting was introduced, modeled on the British BBC. Radio Hamburg, which eventually became the joint broadcasting corporation for the entire British occupation zone as Northwest German Broadcasting (NWDR), went on air on September 22, 1945. The Association of Public Broadcasting Corporations of the Federal Republic of Germany (ARD) was formed on June 5, 1950, from the six regional broadcasting corporations Bavarian Broadcasting (BR), Hessian Broadcasting (HR), Radio Bremen (RB), South German Broadcasting (SDR), Southwest Radio (SWF), and Northwest German Broadcasting (NWDR). Today, ARD, together with ZDF (Second German Television) and Deutschlandradio, form the public broadcasting system in Germany.

Two years later, in 1952, after a two-year test phase, the Federal Republic of Germany began broadcasting its first German television program, NWDR Television, on December 25, 1952. The first major events broadcast on German television, which contributed significantly to its rise in popularity, were the coronation of Elizabeth II and the 1954 FIFA World Cup. In the same year, NWDR was finally operated as a joint program of the regional broadcasting corporations under the name "Deutsches Fernsehen." The name "Das Erste" became established with the launch of "Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen" (ZDF) in 1963 as an informal distinction from this. It was not until 1984 that the station was officially renamed "Erstes Deutsches Fernsehen," which has operated under the name "Das Erste" since April 1996.

On January 1, 1984, the Programmgesellschaft für Kabel- und Satellitenrundfunk (PKS, now Sat.1) became the first private broadcaster in the entire territory of what was then Germany. Just one day later, the second private broadcaster, RTL plus (now RTL Television), followed. In the 1990s and 2000s, the TV market saw significant shifts due to the establishment of additional private television stations and the resulting new channel diversity – for example, the television station RTL alone achieved market shares of almost 20 percent in the mid-1990s. In contrast, the market shares of the public broadcasters Das Erste and ZDF have stagnated at a virtually constant level since the mid-1990s, reaching a combined market share of around 24–27 percent, compared to a combined market share of around 80 percent in the 1980s. By the 2010s, at the latest, the heyday of private television had come to an end. Due to increased competition from the internet—for example, from video portals and streaming platforms—private broadcasters have also been facing a decline in reach for several years.

Tab. I: Market shares of the largest German television stations in the total audience (from 3 years)

television station	market share (%)
	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021
ZDF	12,5	13,0	13,0	13,9	13,0	13,6	14,7
The first	11,6	12,1	11,3	11,3	11,3	11,3	12,1
RTL	9,9	9,7	9,2	8,3	8,4	8,1	7,2
Sat.1	7,9	7,3	6,7	6,2	6,0	5,7	5,2
VOX	5,1	5,2	5,1	4,8	4,8	4,6	4,5
ProSieben	5,3	5,0	4,5	4,4	4,3	4,0	3,7
cable one	3,8	3,8	3,4	3,5	3,6	3,5	3,2
ZDFneo	1,6	2,1	2,9	3,2	3,1	2,9	2,8
NDR Television	2,5	2,4	2,5	2,5	2,6	2,7	2,6
RTL II	3,7	3,5	3,2	3,0	2,9	2,7	2,5
WDR Television	2,2	2,1	2,3	2,3	2,3	2,5	2,5
MDR Television	2,0	1,9	2,0	1,9	2,1	2,1	2,2
SWR Television	1,8	1,8	1,9	1,8	1,9	2,1	2,1
RTLplus	–	–	1,1	1,3	1,4	1,8	2,0
Other channels	14,3	13,2	14,8	14,5	14,6	15,5	16,2

Source: DWDL.com

Internet

In 2000, 30.2 percent of the German population used the internet. Few would have predicted the success story that lay ahead. According to a representative ARD/ZDF online study from 2021, the proportion of internet users in Germany was 94 percent (aged 14 and over), well above the global average of approximately 65 percent. However, only around 79 percent of Germans used the internet daily. Both figures rose rapidly as it became established from the mid-2000s onwards, particularly among younger and middle-aged people. But the new leading medium has now also established itself among older cohorts. 77 percent of respondents over the age of 70 stated that they use the internet in 2021. The undeniable age difference, which nevertheless exists, is particularly evident in terms of the duration of internet use. While the average daily internet usage in Germany is estimated at 149 minutes, it is significantly higher for young people (12 to 19 years old) at an average of 241 minutes.

However, the apparent high popularity of the internet among the German population appears to have preceded the political measures for its expansion. Even though the number of internet connections in Germany is steadily increasing, the country lags behind many other European countries in terms of broadband expansion – especially outside urban areas. In 2019, there were approximately 32.5 million broadband connections, but predominantly in large cities and metropolitan areas. Furthermore, with an average internet speed of 136.82 Mbps for download and 33.05 Mbps for upload, Germany ranked 38th worldwide in 2021, and only 48th when broadband speeds are considered limited. Many other European countries, however, were much earlier in understanding how to lay the foundations for a high-performance digital economy and society by expanding their telecommunications infrastructure. For a long time, Romania was considered the pioneer in Europe in terms of broadband expansion and speed, and even today it ranks only slightly behind the new leader, Denmark.

To understand the importance of digital media in Germany, it is helpful to examine the most visited websites among Germans. A look at the top 10 reveals the clear dominance of US corporations. The most visited website among Germans in 2021 was the internet search engine Google, owned by the US corporation Alphabet Inc. (formerly Google Inc.), followed by the video portal YouTube (also Alphabet Inc.). The social network Facebook (ranked 3rd) and the e-commerce portal Amazon (ranked 4th, Amazon.com, Inc.) also achieved particularly high levels of popularity in terms of traffic. Only two German (media) corporations, Bild.de (ranked 7th, Axel Springer SE) and T-Online.de (ranked 10th, Ströer Media), are represented in the ranking. It is also striking that, in contrast to many other European countries with public broadcasters, public media are not represented at all.

Table II: The most visited websites in Germany in 2021

Rank	Webpage:	Description	Parent company
1.	Google.com	Search engine	Alphabet Inc.
2.	YouTube.com	Video portal	Alphabet Inc.
3.	Facebook.com	Social network	Meta Platforms, Inc.
4.	Amazon.de	e-commerce	Amazon.com, Inc.
5.	Wikipedia.org	Encyclopedia	Wikimedia Foundation
6.	Google.de	Search engine	Alphabet Inc.
7.	Bild.de	News	Axel Springer SE
8.	eBay.de	e-commerce	eBay Inc.
9.	Instagram.com	Social network	Meta Platforms, Inc.
10.	T-Online.de	email, web portal	Ströer Media

Source: Semrush.com

Regulations

Media policy in Germany is characterized by the federal political system and the sharp historical fractures in political structures since the founding of the German Empire in 1871, each of which has led to a new media order. In addition to the public broadcasting system, the Federal Republic has only two major broadcasting families (ProSiebenSat.1, RTL) and a few publishing houses of international importance. Nevertheless, the Bertelsmann Group was at one time the world's largest media group by revenue. As of 2022, it is still by far the largest German group by revenue, but ranks only 18th in international comparison.

The post-war period in the Federal Republic of Germany was characterized by attempts to exert political influence on the media. However, in 1961, Chancellor Adenauer failed in his attempt to create a second television channel, formally private but in fact state-run and controlled by the federal government, as a counterweight to the ARD, which was perceived as "left-leaning." The Federal Constitutional Court held then and has held ever since that the federal government was not responsible for broadcasting regulations. "ZDF" (Second German Television) was subsequently founded by the federal states, with a founding director, Karl Holzamer, and a programming philosophy that gave the then federal government little cause for complaint. Nevertheless, the SPD secured indirect, proportional control over ZDF through personnel policy. As in the case of ARD, the leading mainstream parties, the CDU and SPD, were subsequently split up. The distance from the state, which the Allies intended for the media in the Federal Republic, was undermined by the parties.

Reservations about commercial broadcasting existed particularly among the Social Democrats, during whose time in government in 1973 the "Commission for the Expansion of the Technical Communications System" (KtK) investigated the possibilities of cabling the republic. Under the chairmanship of Federal Postal Minister Horst Ehmke, it was cautiously proposed to initially establish "cable pilot projects." The grassroots democratic hopes for this project, which originally envisaged a two-way flow of information, were dashed due to the high costs. The social-liberal federal government under Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who was a staunch opponent of changes in broadcasting policy, halted the cabling of the Federal Republic. In contrast, Christian Schwarz-Schilling, Postal Minister in the conservative-liberal government under Chancellor Helmut Kohl, vigorously pushed ahead with this process after the change of government, not least to create the technical prerequisites for the broadcast of additional privately owned programs.

The CDU-led states used the cable pilot projects to introduce private broadcasters before state media laws made licensing more difficult. The year 1984, with the licensing of Sat.1 and RTL, is considered the beginning of the "dual system." The CDU and CSU once again sought to counterbalance the public broadcasting system, which they viewed as "left-leaning." However, there were also economic policy motives, as they feared that without these investments, new broadcasters would serve the German market from Luxembourg, Austria, and Switzerland—with dire consequences for the German labor market.

Overall, the Kohl government pursued a protectionist policy, from which the German entrepreneur Leo Kirch (1926–2011) particularly benefited. Under Helmut Kohl, his company achieved international prominence and was able to develop into the largest German media company after Bertelsmann. When the increased diversity of content on the private broadcasters failed to materialize, the theory gained traction that the quantitative increase in programming had at least led to a "de-authorization" of public television and thus to the loss of importance of problematic, politically "missionary" programs.

The beginning of the Berlin Republic was marked by a severe upheaval in the German media market – triggered by the insolvency of the Kirch Group in 2002. A few years earlier, its owner, Leo Kirch, had made a name for himself nationwide. In the wake of the CDU's illegal donation practices (the "CDU donations scandal"), uncovered at the end of 1999, it became known that the CDU, under then-chairman and Chancellor Helmut Kohl, had received undeclared money amounting to 1 million DM from the entrepreneur Leo Kirch alone. Several high-ranking CDU politicians had illegally accepted large sums from various entrepreneurs in the 1980s and 1990s. The donations scandal caused lasting damage to the CDU – particularly to former Chancellor Kohl and the then party and parliamentary group leader Wolfgang Schäuble. As a result, Kohl resigned from his honorary chairmanship of the CDU in 2000, and Schäuble was forced to step down as party and parliamentary group leader. Her successor as party chairman was none other than Angela Merkel. Her role as a "lateral entrant," ascribed to her as a former East German citizen, now stood her in good stead. She was considered untainted by the donations scandal.

The red-green federal government under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder no longer pursued media policy from an industrial policy perspective and ultimately operated against the media rather than with it. Wolfgang Clement, for example, as SPD Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia, had subsidized the establishment of media companies and declared media policy a "top priority." In the ARD and ZDF TV program "Berliner Runde" immediately after the 2005 federal election, the then-incumbent Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who, contrary to expectations, was only narrowly defeated by the CDU under Angela Merkel that evening, accused the public media of conducting a campaign against him in the run-up to the election. ZDF presenter Nikolaus Brender rejected this allegation on the show. Schröder's accusation was generally considered unfounded.

Parallel to the proliferation of television channels in the 2000s, in which newspaper publishers wanted to participate and in some cases did, a reduction in diversity in the print sector took place due to press concentration. This gave rise to calls for an active media policy to safeguard a free press. However, politicians no longer offered their own countermeasures to the mere legalization of media policy. The Federal Cartel Office prevented the takeover of the "Berliner Zeitung" by the Holtzbrinck Group, which owns the Berlin-based "Tagesspiegel," and the sale of ProSiebenSat.1 SE to Axel Springer SE. As a result, both a new capital city newspaper with national reach and a second integrated German media group alongside Bertelsmann were prevented. Instead, international financial investors took over – for example, the media group Media for Europe (MFE, formerly Mediaset) of the Italian entrepreneur and politician Silvio Berlusconi (1936–2023) holds shares in ProSiebenSat.1.

This juridification is further promoted by the European Commission's media policy. The German federal government and the federal states, which want to safeguard "German cultural identity," the broadcasting competence of the states, and the status of public broadcasting, are resisting the EU's efforts to fully enforce free market rules in media policy. The current form of regulation also primarily responds to the involvement of foreign investors by strengthening the public broadcasting model, which appears more politically controllable.

Media policy disputes since the 2010s have primarily taken place between private broadcasters and ARD/ZDF, as well as private publishers and online companies such as Alphabet Inc. (Google) and Meta Platforms, Inc. (Facebook). The first case concerned the extent to which public broadcasters are permitted to present news and entertainment formats online (i.e., whether they pass a so-called "three-step test"), while the second case concerned the manner in which search engines list and display the content of newspaper websites. The so-called "ancillary copyright law" pushed by publishers in 2013 was intended to oblige search engine operators such as Google to pay publishers fees for listing content snippets, but proved de facto impractical. In 2019, the ECJ ruled that German ancillary copyright law was inapplicable because the German government had not submitted the draft to the EU Commission in advance. The 2019 EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market provides for an EU-wide ancillary copyright law. This also includes the controversial "upload filters," which sparked an intense debate in German and other European media. These "upload filters," which are supposed to use software to check whether a file violates copyright during upload and reject it if necessary, are often criticized as aiding "internet censorship." The main criticism is that they could also reject content that expresses a certain opinion, endangering the right to freedom of expression and freedom of the press. In May 2021, the Bundestag and Bundesrat passed the Act to Adapt Copyright Law to the Requirements of EU Directive, which includes an ancillary copyright law for press publishers and the new Copyright Service Provider Act.

Even though public broadcasters are viewed by large sections of the population as an important component of the German media landscape (according to a 2023 NDR survey, 85 percent of Germans support the public broadcasting system), debates about broadcasting fees, program structures, and the oversight of ARD, ZDF, and Deutschlandradio have repeatedly flared up in recent years. The blocking of an 86-cent fee increase in the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament at the end of 2020, which was declared unconstitutional by the Federal Constitutional Court a few months later, caused particular controversy. In August 2022, it became public knowledge that Patricia Schlesinger, then RBB Director General and ARD Chairwoman, had repeatedly wrongfully billed expenses and accepted benefits, whereupon she resigned due to political and media pressure. The incident plunged the ARD into a deep crisis and sparked a heated debate in the German media and politics, in the course of which some even questioned the very existence of public broadcasting. The main criticism, however, concerned the oversight of public broadcasting, the salaries of its directors, and its programming.

*The chapter “History and Profile” is a slightly modified version of the entry “Germany” by Kai Burkhardt from the volume “Fundamentals of Media Policy: A Handbook”, published by IfM and Lutz Hachmeister (2008), pp. 80-86.

literature

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• Christina von Hodenberg: Consensus and Crisis. A History of the West German Media Public 1945-1973, Göttingen 2006.
• Dietrich Schwarzkopf (ed.): Broadcasting Policy in Germany. Competition and the Public Sphere, Munich, 1999.
• DWDL: Analysis of annual market shares 2020, 2021.
• Hans Bausch, (ed.): Broadcasting in Germany, 5 vols., Munich, 1980.
• Jürgen Wilke (ed.): Media History of the Federal Republic of Germany, Cologne 1999.
• Kurt Kszyk: History of the German Press, Vols. 1-3, Berlin 1964-1966.
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• Lutz Hachmeister (ed.), Fundamentals of Media Policy: A Handbook, Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2008.
• Lutz Hachmeister, Christian Wagener & Till Wäscher (eds.), Who Controls the Media? The 50 Largest Media and Knowledge Corporations in the World, Cologne: Halem, 2022.
• NDR: Survey: Public broadcasting yes – but reformed, February 28, 2023.
• Semrush: The most visited and accessed websites in Germany, 2021.
• Victoria Pawlik: Newspaper readers in Germany by age group compared to the population in 2021, Statista, 2022.