As part of the amendment to the Saarland Media Act (SMG), the state government presented a draft amendment last Friday. However, this does not provide for the equal participation of non-denominational and non-religious citizens in the Saarland Broadcasting Council (SR).
For this reason, the President of the Humanist Association of Germany, Frieder Otto Wolf, wrote to the State Chancellery in charge of the public consultation process for the amendment on Thursday. The letter calls for an amendment to the draft to ensure that the SR Broadcasting Council also includes a representative of non-denominational and non-religious people in Saarland in future. These currently make up around 15 percent of the state’s population, and the trend is growing. This social picture must therefore be reflected in the future Broadcasting Council. “In our view, it is essential that this important body has a balanced composition in terms of ideology. Not taking this into account in the new regulations would be a blatant disregard for the interest in equal participation and inclusion of a section of the Saarland population,” Wolf said in the letter. Non-denominational and non-religious people are just as much fee-payers as citizens with religious beliefs. The current draft provides for one seat each on the Broadcasting Council for a member of the Catholic, Protestant and synagogue communities in Saarland. The draft amendment also provides for the inclusion of a member of the Lesbian and Gay Association for the first time. In his letter, Frieder Otto Wolf also referred to the ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court on March 25, 2014, in which it declared the ZDF State Treaty unconstitutional and set out fundamental standards for the design of public broadcasting bodies in the grounds for the ruling. It stated that “in particular, an appropriate determination and weighting of the forces considered in the committees that takes social diversity into account” is required, as well as further: “The composition of the collegial bodies must be geared towards bringing together people with the most diverse perspectives and horizons of experience possible from all areas of the community.” Finally, the legislator must “ensure that when appointing the members of these bodies, as many different groups as possible are taken into account, alternating between large associations that determine public life and smaller groups that do not have easy access to the media, and that perspectives that are not organized coherently are also represented.” From the perspective of the Humanist Association, the participation of a representative of non-denominational and non-religious people in the future SR Broadcasting Council would therefore be appropriate in order to take sufficient account of social diversity. All citizens of Saarland can participate in the public consultation process, which runs until August 28, 2015. The comments will then be evaluated and incorporated into the deliberations on the further development of the draft law. Following consultation in the Council of Ministers, the draft amendment bill will be submitted to the state parliament for a vote in the fall.
