Election commercial

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Campaign spots (in Austria: concern shipments ) in television , with less importance in radio or cinema , are part of electoral campaigning by political parties. In the field of broadcasting, they are legally tightly regulated in Germany, but they are also privileged: For example, the principle of equality of the party law must be observed when allocating broadcasting times . In public broadcasters , the broadcast is free of charge, private broadcasters are only allowed to charge the parties for their own costs. The election commercials are broadcast outside the responsibility of the respective broadcaster.

History and meaning

Election advertising spots in cinemas were broadcast for the first time shortly before the era of National Socialism (in Germany) ( National Socialist Film Policy ). Election television commercials in the form we know today were first used by Dwight D. Eisenhower before the 1952 US presidential campaign. In Germany, the parties were given voting airtime for the first time for the 1957 Bundestag election.

Because of the reach and effectiveness of the medium of television, election commercials in public broadcasting are now used by the majority of the entitled parties because there are no broadcasting costs. In the four weeks before the 2002 Bundestag election , ARD / Das Erste and ZDF broadcast 123 spots with a total duration of 225 minutes. Since the 8 p.m. advertising limit does not apply to the party spots, 124 minutes were broadcast in the otherwise advertising-free evening program, which means an increased attention value. These evening election commercials alone corresponded to an economic value of 8.2 million euros according to the usual tariffs. In the same election campaign, the six nationwide private broadcasters broadcast 305 spots with a total duration of 202 minutes. The widely used regulation that the parties here have to pay 35 percent of the usual media tariffs, apparently led to the use of significantly shorter commercials and many parties to forego the broadcast times offered.

In the 2005 Bundestag election , 24 out of 32 participating parties made use of the broadcasting facility on public television. The SPD and CDU received 8 slots each on ARD and ZDF; Greens , FDP and CSU each 4, the Left 3 and all other parties two slots on each of the two channels.

Legal bases

Due to the jurisdiction under broadcasting law and the dual broadcasting system , election advertising in Germany is regulated by a large number of legal norms. The state broadcasting laws are decisive for the broadcasters of the ARD . Here, for example, Article 4 (2) 2 of the Bavarian Broadcasting Act has provided for broadcasting time since August 1948 and Paragraph 3, Item 6 of the Hessian Broadcasting Act since October 1948. The other federal states with the exception of Bremen later anchored similar regulations, Berlin however only when the RBB was founded in 2002 by § 8 (2) of the State Treaty on the establishment of a joint broadcasting company of the states of Berlin and Brandenburg and only as a "can" provision. The broadcast was controversial in the previous SFB . Only for Radio Bremen there is still no such requirement.

For ZDF , Paragraph 11 of the ZDF State Treaty regulates the basic broadcasting time:

"Parties are to be given adequate airtime during their participation in the elections to the German Bundestag if at least one state list has been approved for them. Furthermore, parties and other political associations are entitled to adequate airtime for the European Parliament during their participation in the elections of the members of the Federal Republic of Germany if at least one nomination has been approved for them. "

Section 42 (2) of the State Treaty on Broadcasting contains almost identical provisions for private broadcasting that is widespread nationwide , but differs from the text in the State Treaty on ZDF in that it is inserted twice "against reimbursement of cost." In addition, the state media authorities have jointly published a handout on how to implement the regulation. It is non-binding, but describes the legal opinions of the authorities. Because of the special situation of private broadcasting in Bavaria , which according to the constitution is also to be run under public law, implementing regulations are here as the only federal state laid down in the form of a statute.

If parties do not take part in an election in the entire electoral area, i.e. only compete with individual lists or direct candidates , the individual state regulations on airtime entitlement differ greatly: for example, the entitlement to airtime arises from Section 36 (2) of the State Media Act of North Rhine-Westphalia Participation in one sixth of the constituencies. In the area of ​​the NDR, half of the constituencies are required under Section 15 of the NDR State Treaty , in Bavaria the approval of an election proposal from a party or group of voters is sufficient, the Hessian Broadcasting Act limits the claim in Section 3 sentence 6 to parties with proposals in all constituencies.

Case law and controversy

The legal norms on which the broadcast is based release the broadcasters from the content-related responsibility for the content of the election advertising, but allow a rejection of obviously illegal contributions. In addition, the implementation of the principle of equal treatment is subject to judicial review. This has repeatedly led to legal disputes between the institutions and parties.

Discrimination against non-established parties

The Federal Constitutional Court first dealt with election advertisements in 1957, when the " Federation of Germans, Party for Unity, Peace and Freedom " had lodged a constitutional complaint against the NDR because it was not allowed airtime. According to the legal situation at the time, the court decided that the NDR was free to broadcast “election propaganda”, but that it was not allowed to limit it to the parties represented in the Bundestag. Refusing airtime to individual political parties whose state lists are approved violates the Basic Law . This decision was also binding for the other state broadcasters. The court reiterated its position in 1962 on the occasion of a constitutional complaint by the FDP against Westdeutscher Rundfunk , but at the same time allowed a differentiation: It found that it was compatible with the principle of equal competitive opportunities, “the respective importance of the political parties up to a certain point Especially when measuring the airtime for election propaganda. "

Anti-constitutional statements

After party disputes about the specific allocation of broadcasting slots, the recent disputes have shifted to the content of the contributions and the right of the broadcasters to reject them. In 1978 the Federal Constitutional Court ruled on three constitutional complaints that had been filed by the KPD / ML , KBW and KPD on various issues . For the first time, it was about the question of whether the content of the broadcasters can be checked for criminal content. The Federal Constitutional Court denied a right of rejection solely because of anti-constitutional statements within a contribution, but declared a refusal to broadcast in the event of an “obvious and serious violation of general norms of criminal law” to be permissible. In one of the underlying cases, the WDR had rejected the radio commercial, among other things, because it contained the sentence: “If we take part in the elections, then we want to prove to you: the bourgeois parliament is a corrupt chatterbox, like Lenin said that deserves nothing other than to be dispersed by the revolutionary popular masses. "

Criminal content

In the run-up to the European elections in 1984 , the German Center Party had submitted an election advertisement that was directed against the current abortion law and, according to the WDR and Cologne Administrative Court, “ equates the constitutional system of the Federal Republic of Germany with injustice systems such as the Nazi state and as an abuse of the constitutional order of the Federal Republic of Germany fulfills the offense of Section 90a Paragraph 1 No. 1 StGB ”(cf. disparagement of the state and its symbols ). In its express decision, the Federal Constitutional Court did not deal in detail with this assessment of the content, but expressed "considerable concerns" and ultimately determined in the urgent case that the party could broadcast another, already used and unopposed spot. In the later main proceedings, the Federal Constitutional Court specified its decisions of 1978 and narrowed the discretion of the broadcasters as to when an obvious and serious violation of criminal norms is to be seen: “The importance of election campaigns for the democratic process requires an interpretation of the criminal provisions, which in any case allows a more robust use of language for value judgments about the ideas and attitudes of competing political parties and groups than, for example, for expressing opinions about people. Citizens in a free democracy also know how to classify the use of language in election campaigns. "

Fun parties

Youth protection aspects were cited by WDR and ZDF when they rejected a spot by the Anarchist Pogo Party of Germany for the 2005 Bundestag election in which, after a description by the star, “People drink beer, eat dog food, hit each other on the head with beer cans and hit each other with an ax Hit the computer ”. The party called the administrative courts and finally the Federal Constitutional Court after ARD and ZDF were only ready to broadcast after cuts. The party was initially able to obtain an injunction from the Higher Administrative Court of Münster against the WDR as the lead institution for the ARD, but was defeated against the ZDF before the Higher Administrative Court of Rhineland-Palatinate in Koblenz. Also in the 2005 Bundestag election, the fun party DIE PARTTEI auctioned off the airtime for 14,000 euros on an internet auction platform and then bought it back because a low-cost airline offered 25,000 euros for being placed in the election commercial. The election broadcast was actually designed in the airline's corporate identity and made numerous parodic references to it.

Agitation against minorities

In the run-up to the Hessian state elections in 2008 , the Hessischer Rundfunk rejected the broadcast of an election advertisement by the NPD which, among other things, contained the demands for a "cancellation of subsidies for Jewish communities, cancellation of subsidies for migration and integration, expulsion of all foreigners from foreign cultures" and according to the opinion the institution meant a criminally sanctioned sedition. The administrative court deciding in the first instance rejected an injunction against the HR, but the NPD prevailed before the Hessian Administrative Court, which referred to the case law of the Federal Constitutional Court which, in the opinion of the VGH, “the intendant in examining the parties under their own responsibility and only With the technical means of the transmitter, the constitution imposes a clear restraint on advertising spots to be broadcast, which only allows rejection if there is obvious, tangible criminality. "

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Matthias S. Fifka : "Election campaign on television - television during election campaign"  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 144 kB), Academy for Political Education, Tutzing 2008@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / web.apb-tutzing.de  
  2. ↑ Dieter K. Müller: "Election advertising on television: ARD and ZDF as advertising media after 8:00 pm"  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 248 kB), in: Media Perspektiven 12/2002@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.media-perspektiven.de  
  3. ↑ Christina Holtz-Bacha / Eva-Maria Lessinger: How the listlessness was counteracted - television election advertising 2005, in: The mass media in the election campaign, p. 164 ff., Springer 2006
  4. ↑ Uwe Jens Lindner: "A sign, nothing more" , Berliner Zeitung Online from January 19, 1994
  5. ^ ARD Chronicle of December 10, 1993: Election year 1994: RB does not broadcast any party spots
  6. ↑ ZDF: ZDF State Treaty of August 31, 1991 as amended June 1, 2009 ( Memento of the original of May 28, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 87 kB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.zdf.de
  7. ↑ Joint office of the media authorities: Legal information from the state media authorities on the election broadcasting times for political parties in the nationwide private broadcasting of March 19, 2013 (PDF; 114 kB)
  8. ↑ Bavarian State Center for New Media: Statute on election advertising in offers according to the Bavarian Media Act (Wahlwerbesatzung - WWS) ( Memento of the original from March 20, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 36 kB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.blm.de
  9. ^ ARD Chronicle of September 3, 1957: Federal Constitutional Court decides on election advertising on the radio
  10. ↑ Federal Constitutional Court: judgment of September 3, 1957 - 2 BvR 7/57 (BVerfGE 7, 99)
  11. ↑ Federal Constitutional Court: Order of May 30, 1962 - 2 BvR 158/62 (BVerfGE 14,121), online at Telemedicus
  12. ↑ Um Minuten , Spiegel 31/1076 of July 26, 1976
  13. ↑ Federal Constitutional Court: Order of February 14, 1978 - 2 BvR 523/75; 2 BvR 958/76; 2 BvR 977/76 (BVerfGE 47, 198), online at Das Fallrecht
  14. ↑ Federal Constitutional Court: Order of May 30, 1984 - 2 BvR 617/84 (BVerfGE 67, 149), online at Telemedicus
  15. ↑ Federal Constitutional Court: Order of April 25, 1985, 2 BvR 617/84 (BVerfGE 69, 257), online at Das Fallrecht
  16. ^ Pogo party moves to Karlsruhe in the campaign dispute , Handelsblatt.de of September 9, 2005
  17. ↑ APPD- "Scandalspot" no longer on TV , Stern.de from September 12, 2005
  18. ↑ Georg Ismar / Jenny Tobien: This is dirt - satire party mixes up the election campaign , Welt Online from January 30, 2008
  19. ↑ Hessischer Rundfunk has to send NPD election advertising , Tagesspiegel.de of January 4, 2008
  20. ^ Hessian Administrative Court : Judgment 8 B 17/08 of January 4, 2008

See also