The accusation of “bought journalism” rarely targets a single article, but rather a structural problem: government agencies commission journalists and pay them fees. This creates a financial relationship between politics and the media, which are meant to exercise oversight. In Baden-Württemberg, this issue is documented in a parliamentary document that records payments for activities such as moderating events, giving lectures, training sessions, and providing consulting services within the government.
Baden-Württemberg: Fees, Contracts, and the Effect of Trust
It’s important to understand that the frequently cited total of over €553,000 for Baden-Württemberg between 2022 and 2025 is presented in reports as a aggregation of items listed in official documents. This figure, purely mathematically, equates to a minimum of €138,250 per year and approximately €11,521 per month.
An additional trust effect arises from travel and accompanying regulations. State parliament documents stipulate that, under certain circumstances, partial reimbursement of flight and hotel costs for journalistic coverage of political trips may be provided. Even if this is formulated as an organizational rule, any reimbursement of costs acts as a signal of closeness.
Federal Government: Millions in Costs and Clear Shares
At the federal level, the amount can be precisely quantified. The Bundestag reports fees of €875,231.92 for public broadcasting journalists and Deutsche Welle, and €596,596.55 for private media outlets between 2018 and 2022, totaling €1,471,828.47. This results in a share of approximately 59.45 percent for public broadcasting and approximately 40.55 percent for private media. The difference is €278,635.37, with a ratio of approximately 1.47 to 1 in favor of public broadcasting.
The underlying Bundestag document is the primary source that makes payments traceable by department and category. Anyone wanting to investigate the allegation of “bought” funding must start there: with the types of services provided, the awarding practices, and the fee amounts, not with mere assumptions.
State effect: Not an outlier, but a pattern
That Baden-Württemberg and the federal government are not isolated cases is demonstrated by other states with parliamentaryly documented instances. Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania discloses corresponding payments in its state parliament documents.
The core issue remains simple from a democratic theory perspective. As soon as politics is not only the subject of reporting but also acts as a commissioning body, the balance of trust shifts. Even if every payment is formally justified, a structural conflict of interest arises that can hardly be neutralized by transparency alone.
Further evidence from other federal states
Additional official evidence can be found in Lower Saxony. There, the state government answered a parliamentary inquiry regarding paid assignments, fees, or other payments to journalists. For a detailed breakdown, they referred to an appendix; a reliable total amount is not stated in the document itself.
In North Rhine-Westphalia, a series of documents exists under the title “Bought Journalists.” A response from the state government to the question of how much North Rhine-Westphalia is spending on this issue documents the matter as a parliamentary process. At the same time, the collection of the requested data for the period in question is explicitly stated as not feasible with a reasonable amount of effort. Therefore, no quantifiable total sum can be derived from this.
In addition, a separate response exists in North Rhine-Westphalia, specifically relating to the Ministry of the Interior and the year 2010. This document also refers to the lack of feasible data collection within the scope of the parliamentary inquiry, and therefore no specific sum is mentioned.
In Saxony-Anhalt, reliable evidence is also available in the form of a parliamentary document. This document aggregates the payment amounts for each ministry or agency; adding the aggregated totals listed in the appendix—€70,324.29, €11,894.74, €22,098.33, €20,443.45, €19,049.31, €5,355.00, €500.00, €73,927.20, and €59,409.64—results in a total of €283,001.96 for the period in question.
Finally, there is a parliamentary procedure in Hesse that addresses payments and grants in the media sector. The donations explicitly quantified in the document amount to €1,390,769 for the F.A.Z. publishing house over the years 2018 to 2022, while a total of €156,000 is cited for Hessian Broadcasting (HR) for media education projects in schools over the same period. (KOB)