News information is amply available in Germany from a wide variety of sources. With an assumed literacy rate of nearly 100 per cent and a high per capita gross domestic product, media are affordable to most Germans. However, 12.1 per cent of the population has only low-level literacy (Grotlüschen et al., 2019). The broadcast media, newspapers, and the Internet are the main news providers for the German population. News consumption in Germany is still rather traditional, with television being the most important source of news.
These patterns changed slightly due to the Covid-19 crisis. In April 2020, 69 per cent of Germans used online media as a source of news, 72 per cent television, 39 per cent social media, 41 per cent radio, and 26 per cent print (Newman et al., 2020).
Weekly offline reach for public service media news (ARD, ZDF, and Deutschlandradio) is at 66 per cent, with less reach for the commercial competitors (RTL 29%; n-tv 20%) (Schulz et al., 2019). However, television news consumption as well as radio news consumption has been declining over the years, while print shows a slight increase. The following is the data for people who are online, making up 89 per cent of the German population (Statista, 2019a).
95 per cent of the group watch, listen, or read the news at least several times a day – a stable percentage over the years. The number of adults who are online, who are very much or much interested in the news, has slightly declined to 68 per cent (Hölig & Hasebrink, 2019). Instagram has become a popular source on social media, with 38 per cent of 18–24-year-olds using it (Newman et al., 2020).
A different picture appears concerning print if we look at the whole population, comprised of Internet users as well as non-Internet users. More than half (55.8%) of the German population above 14 years old regularly read a printed newspaper (BDZV, 2020); 63.6 per cent of the German population above 14 years old are unique readers of the online version. Adding in mobile users who access news via smartphone or tablet, and 85 per cent of the population above 14 years old read printed or digital newspapers regularly. Regarding the vital regional and local mediascape of newspapers, 34 per cent use these newspapers at least once a week (Newman et al., 2019), which is a sharp decline of 5 per cent compared to the previous year (Newman et al., 2018).
Looking at differences in age groups, printed newspapers have their highest reach (72–76%) among people aged 50–70. On the other end, only 22.6 per cent of 14–19-year-olds and 33.7 per cent of 20–29-year-olds read printed dailies regularly. These 14–29-year-olds together use the online version of dailies at 79 per cent (BDZV, 2020).
Public service providers like ARD and ZDF remain the most-trusted news brands in Germany along with regional newspapers. ARD news, the first channel of nationwide public service broadcasting, is regularly watched by 55 per cent of the online population above 14 years old, and ZDF news, the second channel of public service broadcasting, by 47 per cent (Newman et al., 2020). A study revealed that news is the most important genre on television (Gscheidle & Geese, 2017), with the average watching time of television news remaining stable over the years and amounting to 13 minutes per day in 2016. Three-quarters of the daily news consumption is allotted to public service channels. With 9.8 million viewers daily, the programme Tagesschau of the first public service channel ARD is the highest-ranked television news programme. The study showed that audiences demand competence and reliability.
