Helmut Hartung was born in 1951 in Berlin.
After completing his studies in journalism from 1974-1977 in Leipzig, he began work as a producer and managing producer at GDR Television (DDR Fernsehen) and German Television Broadcasting (Deutscher Fernsehfunk).
From 1991 to 1996, he acted as head of the Berlin office of Infas, a major German research and polling institute for applied social sciences, and he was also responsible for representing Infas in former states of the GDR. Hartung became an independent entrepreneur in 1997, and in May of that year he launched his own political magazine “promedia – das medienpolitische Magazin,” which he continues to publish today.
He also works as an author and publisher of several media publications.