German media regulator calls for big tech tax to fund local journalism

Germany's top media regulator Thorsten Schmiege has called for large digital platforms to make a financial contribution to protect local media diversity, he said in an interview with the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper published on Monday.

"Why should an appropriate share not flow back to those whose content large platforms ultimately profit from economically," Schmiege said.

Schmiege said the democratic function of local media was "enormous." 

"Local journalism is not a nice-to-have, but democratic infrastructure," he said.

Schmiege chairs the directors' conference of State Media Authorities (DLM), which oversees and promotes private radio and television providers as well as online platforms across Germany's federal states. He is also president of the Bavarian State Office for New Media (BLM).

Schmiege fears loss of diversity

Opportunities to generate revenue on the open market were particularly limited at the local level, Schmiege said. Local information could barely be adequately funded through advertising alone, he added. 

"A diversity contribution must therefore reach precisely those places where diversity would otherwise disappear," he said.

Whether and how media should be supported by money from artificial intelligence (AI) giants and platforms has long been a subject of controversy. 

Wolfram Weimer, the non-partisan federal media minister, is pushing for a digital levy at the national level, but the proposal is contested within the ruling coalition. 

State premier and Bavarian conservative party leader Markus Söder, for example, opposes such a levy. Schmiege himself said the digital levy approach was "plausible" from the media industry's perspective, but that there were also hurdles to overcome.