Rundfunkbeitrag is waaaay too much and they are not interested in lowering it. Compare that to the similar system in Japan which is way cheaper and they actually lowered the cost in recent years. Germany has too many public radio and tv stations where a lot of content is nearly the same. The ARD is also not as independent as they claim, just look at how many politicans are in the Rundfunkrat.

OP said it's not a tax but it is the same. You have to pay it even if you don't use it and you go to jail if you don't want to pay. Doesn't matter how they are describing it, it's a pseudo-tax.

>the funded news organizations are encouraged to be rather neutral and they don't use that much weird rhetoric

Tagesschau is all but neutral and the tone of ZDF Heute is very aggressive. At least they are consistently bad and private newspapers are even worse so you know what you get. The state of news in Germany is sad but what do you expect when journalists side with politicians and favor more censorship?