Some call it "compulsory fees", others euphemistically "contribution service":
Opinions are divided when it comes to levies for the services provided by ÖRR - public service broadcasting.
Since January 1, 2013, the so-called broadcasting fee from ARD, ZDF, Deutschlandradio and nine other public broadcasters has been
automatically collected from EVERY private household in Germany.
And this is completely independent of whether the people living in this household ever listen to television and radio,
and also whether there is a television or radio there at all.
More and more people are annoyed by these compulsory fees - especially those who deliberately avoid state television.
Why avoid it? There are many reasons for this:
1. television makes you stupid
Excessive TV consumption has negative consequences, especially for children:
Studies show that they later have problems at school and show deficits in social behavior.
Watching television for too long damages the verbal memory of older people.
In a large long-term study, hours of daily TV consumption led to significant deficits in remembering spoken
information - regardless of other influencing factors.
But even just a few minutes after the start of a program, 23-36% of respondents - in a test - were no
longer able to answer the question about the content.
We must conclude from this that not only thoughts are switched off, but also attention - i.e. conscious perception.
The content may have been superficially forgotten, but the effect of the images on the emotions lasts longer!
2. television has a hypnotic effect and can manipulate
Dick Sutphen found out that television causes a form of hypnosis:
To a certain extent, there is a suspension of thought and a certain lack of willpower.
It has been discovered that this happens when every 32nd frame in the movie is frameless or black.
"This creates a 45-beats-per-minute pulsation that is only perceived by the subconscious.
Ideal for inducing "deep hypnosis", during which we become receptive to the content being sent - says Sutphen.
The more we watch TV, the deeper the hypnosis goes - even to the extent that even children can hardly tolerate TV deprivation.
TV releases enkephalins and beta-endorphins in the body, which are substances that get you high
and are also released when some drugs are taken.
This also means that you stay tuned to programs that you don't like at all.
3. the leading media have abandoned their role as the controlling power in the state
As numerous alternative media prove, the state media are no longer doing their original job.
As the so-called fourth power in the state, they would have a control function over the three powers of the state - legislative,
executive and judiciary - in order to prevent abuse of power.
To this end, the media should publish politically significant facts that would otherwise remain deliberately concealed.
The idea was to expose grievances in politics, business and society.
For this reason, journalists are also required to be "independent of the state" so that they can
"work independently of the institutions of power".
This is the only way to ensure effective control.
The broadcasts show that this required distance from the state has long since ceased to exist:
The Federal Constitutional Court also confirmed its role as guardian of democracy in its
historic ruling in 1966, the so-called Spiegel ruling:
"A free press, not controlled by public authority and not subject to censorship, is an essential element of a liberal
state; in particular, a free, regularly published political press is indispensable for modern democracy.
If citizens are to make political decisions, they need to be fully informed, but they also need to know and be
able to weigh up the opinions that others have formed.
The press keeps this constant discussion going."
Instead of fulfilling its task, however, the - only supposedly - "free" press has mutated in recent decades into a propaganda tool
for the financial oligarchs of the Bilderberg Group and the World Economic Forum, who have
significant control over both politics and the media.
This makes not only the public broadcasters, but the leading media as a whole, the main tool of warmongers,
Big Pharma and the entire digital financial complex.
Since they are obviously no longer independent, but have fallen into the hands of people and organizations who deliberately want
to manipulate people and misuse them for evil purposes, they bear the main
responsibility for deceitful war lies and warmongering.
They cover the ongoing vaccination crimes, the worldwide expropriation crimes, the thousands of child abductions every
year, they cover bioweapon attacks as well as attacks by mobile phones and contaminated
food on the whole of humanity and thousands more.
So it's no wonder that more and more people are no longer willing to pay compulsory fees, especially as every
fee-payer is indirectly complicit in the crimes just mentioned through their radio contribution.
The Beitragsstopper.de initiative is a small step in the right direction.
Together with a team of lawyers, it supports people who want to defend themselves against the broadcasting fee.
The lawyers have prepared recommendations for action and sample letters, e.g. "Objection to an assessment
notice from the Beitragsservice" and are available to answer questions in the legal battle.
To cover their costs, users of the "contribution stopper" are charged a one-off payment of 55.08 euros, which
corresponds to the broadcasting fee for a quarter of a year.
After that you can use their services indefinitely.
The aim of the campaign is to protest in this way against the manipulative reporting by public broadcasters and to
put an end to the compulsory contribution by legal means.
The "contribution stopper" campaign is currently based on a ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court from July 2018.
At the time, the court had dismissed several complaints that the broadcasting fee was not constitutional.
The Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the right to levy broadcasting fees is given because
the viewer receives a concrete individual benefit.
This concrete, individual advantage would consist above all in the fact that the viewer would be offered authentic,
diverse reporting based on carefully researched information.
Now the contribution stoppers are working on proving that this advantage does not
exist, but rather that the opposite is the case.
However, it is almost impossible to collect the arguments and evidence needed to bring
down the broadcasting contribution on your own.
This is why the creators of the contribution stopper developed the "rundfunkalarm.de" program.
With just a few clicks, you can create program complaints that are difficult to contest.
These can then be sent to the directors and state broadcasting councils of the broadcasters when all the
principles of journalistic work have once again been violated.
The position of the contribution stoppers is to move from complaining to doing.
Via the broadcasting alert, it is possible to submit a veritable flood of program complaints to the public
broadcasters and their supervisory bodies, the broadcasting councils, with thousands of contributors day after day.
With this collection, the systematic failure and widespread misconduct of public service broadcasting is to
be meticulously proven far beyond the individual case.
The aim is to be able to use this as explosive evidence to support legal action.
Over 50,000 program complaints have already been generated using this tool.
This program is very easy to use, so anyone can help unleash a huge wave of program complaints:
You can select the relevant TV channel and program on the date of the day in question.
For example: 05.03.25 - ARD - Tagesschau - at 10:40 am.
Then you click on the reason for the program complaint, for example one-sidedness, false reporting,
warmongering, personal defamation, indecent content, censorship.
Finally, you can type in your own reasons or join existing program complaints.
The result is an overview that shows that the misconduct of public broadcasters is a systematic
failure that goes far beyond individual cases.
All these complaints then flow back into the work of the "contribution stopper" in order to substantiate the
complaints against the decisions of the "contribution service".
Members of the initiative Beitragsstopper.de who wish to take legal action against the assessment notices are now provided with
a 230-page statement of claim which shows in detail that public service broadcasting is not
fulfilling its legal mandate in the slightest.
The aim is to fight our way through the administrative courts all the way to the Federal Constitutional
Court in order to bring about a fundamental change.
The "Beitragstopper" team would therefore like as many people as possible to take part.
The more well-founded and broader the data on misconduct by public broadcasters becomes, the more
difficult it will be for the courts to overlook it.
At the same time, the public broadcaster is getting a sense from the many program complaints that this is not a people who are
simply allowing themselves to be educated in the desired direction, but who are
rather watching their backs and fighting back.