The Federal Association of Digital Publishers and Newspaper Publishers (BDZV) has called on Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (FDP) to immediately “eliminate the blatant violation of the constitution” that the association sees in the “Libra Legal Briefing”.
In the light of the current decisions of the Federal Court of Justice, the internet legal briefing for which “juris GmbH”, which is to be attributed to the public sector, is “not (any longer) legitimized”.
The FDP politician was recently accused of the "Libra legal briefing" created in April 2022 by Juris GmbH, which is majority state-owned, primarily to market his policies and those of his party.
In its statement, the BDZV argues even more fundamentally that the requirement that the press be “remote from the state” also applies to online media in the public sector.
It goes without saying, for example, that “the Chancellery is not allowed to publish a political weekly, the Ministry of Economics is not allowed to publish a business magazine that provides comprehensive information, and the Ministry of Justice is not allowed to publish a 'justice newspaper' that provides general information”.
State public relations work is limited to communicating one's own activities.
However, “Libra” spreads foreign news “in violation of the neutrality requirement applicable to state media”.
"Libra" replaces "the comparable offers made available by the publishing industry for the area of 'law' (Legal Tribune online, FAZ objection, specialist pages in daily newspapers, etc.)".
According to the BDZV, if the Federal Minister of Justice eliminated the violation of the constitution, this would prevent the publishers “from having to go before the civil courts again”.