Germany — news channels live

BILD was founded in 1952 and is Germany's highest-circulation newspaper, owned by the Axel Springer group. It is the clearest German representative of the tabloid tradition: short sentences, large headlines, heavy use of pictures. Its power to shape the country's political agenda has long been a subject of argument.

BILD's television and digital video operation carries the paper's editorial line on screen. Watching it with its tabloid identity and the group's line in mind is necessary to place its reporting correctly.

BR24 is the news brand of Bayerischer Rundfunk, the Bavarian member of the ARD federation. It is a concrete illustration of the state-based structure of German public broadcasting: alongside the national agenda, Bavaria's own politics, economy and daily life sit at the centre of its output.

That regional reporting is visible at national scale shows how Germany's federal structure is reflected in its media. The channel carries national and international news as well, but what distinguishes it is journalism originating in Bavaria.

DW Deutsch is Deutsche Welle's German-language channel. Because of the organisation's international remit its audience is not Germany alone but German speakers worldwide and learners of the language, so culture, science and language teaching feature prominently alongside news.

For a reader outside the country who wants German domestic affairs in German, it is a direct source. Its live feed is open on YouTube.

DW News is the English-language service of Deutsche Welle, Germany's international public broadcaster. DW was founded in 1953 and, unlike other German public broadcasters, is funded directly from the federal budget rather than the household contribution; its remit is to explain Germany to the world and to carry broadcasting into countries where access to independent news is restricted. It operates from two centres, in Bonn and Berlin.

The organisation publishes in close to thirty languages, which makes it one of the few routes to independent news in a local language under authoritarian government. The English channel carries the European agenda to an international audience from a German and European vantage point, and is strong on economics and European Union affairs.

It streams live on YouTube, free and uninterrupted.

n-tv launched in 1992 as Germany's first twenty-four-hour rolling news channel and introduced the continuous news format to the country. It belongs to the RTL Deutschland group. Its schedule is built on short bulletin cycles, market and stock-exchange strands and documentary programming.

The channel carries particular weight in business journalism: regular live links from the Frankfurt exchange and market analysis are fixed elements of its output. It has strong capacity to move to uninterrupted coverage of breaking developments.

phoenix is a public channel operated jointly by ARD and ZDF and launched in 1997. What sets it apart from other news channels is that it does not summarise: it carries events whole. Sittings of the Bundestag, party conferences, press conferences and committee hearings are transmitted from beginning to end, uninterrupted and without commentary.

That format has made the channel the raw record of the political process in Germany. For a reader who wants a speech in full, an entire sitting, or an argument uncut, it is a source with few equivalents. The remaining schedule is given to documentary and background programming.

tagesschau is the news brand of Germany's public broadcaster ARD, and the evening bulletin of the same name has been broadcast since 1952. It is produced by NDR in Hamburg and transmitted simultaneously across the whole ARD network. It is the most watched news programme in the country, and its plainness is a deliberate editorial choice: fifteen minutes of fact, with comment left to other programmes.

The brand is now more than a bulletin: the rolling channel tagesschau24, the online news service and a verification unit all sit under the same roof. Under the public funding model it operates free of advertising.

Its YouTube account carries bulletins and special coverage, going live for major events.

WELT is the news channel of the Axel Springer group and, together with the newspaper of the same name, forms the group's news arm. The channel previously broadcast as N24 and was restructured under an integrated brand with the paper after joining the group.

Its schedule carries documentary strands and discussion programming alongside bulletins. Axel Springer is one of Germany's largest publishing groups and publishes its editorial principles openly, which is useful corporate context for judging the channel.

ZDFheute is the news brand of ZDF, Germany's second public broadcaster. ZDF was created by an interstate treaty as a federal-scale institution and is based in Mainz; it operates independently of ARD, and the coexistence of the two is the product of the pluralism principle in German public broadcasting.

Its main bulletin, heute, and the evening analysis programme heute journal are its best-known output; the second is given over to the context behind the news. ZDF maintains a broad network of foreign bureaus and relies on its own correspondents for international coverage.

Its YouTube account carries bulletins, analysis and event-driven live coverage.