Democracy requires a free press. However, most people rarely reflect on the requisite infrastructures and policies that maintain a healthy press system. Today, as we look to journalism to protect us ...against misinformation and authoritarianism, the press is in a structural crisis. Journalism's institutional support is collapsing, leaving entire regions and issues uncovered at a time when we desperately need reliable information and robust reporting. The crisis is disproportionately harming specific groups and regions, especially communities of color, rural areas, and lower socio-economic neighborhoods. This article addresses key policy issues that are central to the future of journalism, including those connected to media ownership, broadband policy, and the rise of new digital monopolies such as Facebook. It concludes with a call for designing a new public media system in the United States.
This paper reports a community development project, particulary an initiative to overcome the scarcity of public media advocacies with strong emphasis to the dissemination of public media knowledge. ...The advocacies to urge public media as a pillar of a democratized media in Indonesia has been going on since 2002. However, most movements are centered solely on academic forums, research or political lobby aspiring policy changes to Indonesian policymakers. This project fills the gab by establishing media academy, a model of public media course targeted public media professionals. This project was organized throughout August and September 2021, involved two institutions: the Communication Study Program of Universitas Islam Indonesia and Public Broadcast Clearing House (RPLPP) as the main partners of this social program. The course provides an interactive online course involving 15 participants and 8 mentors using Zoom meet application. In addition to lectures on public media system and its policies, participants of this course receive assistance in their creation as well as production of a public oriented content which are worthy of being displayed on their digital media channels. This activity succeeded in enriching the participants’ insight and analytical skills on public media issues. It also succeeded in designing a public media curriculum, which could be adopted by higher education institution of communication in Indonesia.
This study examines whether and how public media systems contribute to the health of democracies in 33 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, North America, the Middle East, Latin America, and South ...America. We gather national economic data and public media funding levels, audience shares, and regulatory data, primarily for 2018 and 2019 but in some cases earlier, due to lack of available data. We then assess correlations with strength of democracy indices and extend Hallin and Mancini's typology of North American and European media systems through hierarchical cluster analysis of these 33 countries. We find five models of public media systems around the world, ranging from “state-administered” systems with low levels of independence (Botswana and Tunisia) to systems aligning with Hallin and Mancini's “Democratic Corporatist” model, with strong and secure (multiyear) funding, large audience shares, and strong regulatory protection for their independence. In between, we identify three mixed models: a “Liberal-Pluralist” model, a “Direct Funding” model, and a “Commercial–Public” model. Correlations and cluster analyses show that high levels of secure funding for public media systems and strong structural protections for the political and economic independence of those systems are consistently and positively correlated with healthy democracies.
As the state of U.S. local journalism continues to deteriorate, contributing to growing news deserts and the proliferation of mis- and disinformation, alternative models for sustaining local news are ...increasingly paramount. One such alternative to the failing commercial model that deserves more attention, we argue, is the American public media system. While less robust than its international counterparts, the U.S. public media system tends to be less reliant on market support, less subject to commercial pressures, and more devoted to a universal service mission. This study explores to what extent the American public media system may serve to lessen the severity of the local journalism crisis. Drawing on interviews and conversations with two dozen public media practitioners and analysts, our research examines how public media could be reimagined and repurposed to better serve local information needs. We conclude that a renewed investment in the existing system in tandem with structural reforms presents a possible pathway towards a more sustainable future for local news.
Apology: The Role of Public Media in the Era of Late Modern Media In our presentation, we give an outline of the aspect public service aims to assume in the present era of late modern media in terms ...of involvement and contents. By looking into issues like the purpose of public service, its place in society and dual media system, its connection with market liberalism as well as its political independence, the presentation tries to demonstrate that, more than an economical, social and political issue, public service is rather a question of ideals and principles. Furthermore, our study intends to be a debate material trying to answer the question what public television and radio means today, how far they have gone on the road of democratization and how social and political surveillance and media market situation evolves. Our analysis is aimed at the basic values and purposes of public service, where the question of the presumed failure of public media, it is getting independent and fulfilling its purpose can be evaluated in terms of the functions of content supplying.
In light of the media industry's growing focus on audience engagement, this article explores how online and offline forms of engagement unfold within journalism, based on a comparative case study of ...two American public media newsrooms. This study addresses gaps in the literature by (1) examining what engagement means for public media and (2) applying the concept of reciprocal journalism to evaluate the nature of reciprocity (direct, indirect, or sustained) in the give-and-take between journalists and their communities. Drawing on direct observation and in-depth interviews, this article shows how this emerging focus on engagement is driven by public media journalists' desire to make their relationship with the public more enduring and mutually beneficial. We find that such journalists privilege offline modes of engagement (e.g., listening sessions and partnerships with local organizations) in hopes of building trust and strengthening ties with their community, more so than digital modes of engagement (e.g., social media) that are more directly tied to news publishing. Moreover, this case study reveals that public media organizations, in and through their engagement efforts, are distinguishing between the communities they cover in their reporting and the audiences they reach with their reporting.
•Analyzes informed trading dynamics around bankruptcy notices.•Finds pre-announcement selling reduces announcement impact.•Notes weaker effects in firms with extensive media coverage.•Identifies ...post-announcement trading as a bankruptcy outcome predictor.•Suggests results indicate significant information leakage.
We investigate the dynamics of informed trading both before and after corporate bankruptcy announcements using high frequency data. Our findings reveal that pre-announcement informed selling attenuates subsequent announcement returns, with this effect being weaker for firms receiving extensive pre-announcement media coverage or adverse news sentiment. We also find that post-announcement informed trading can serve as a predictor of subsequent bankruptcy outcomes. Overall, results are consistent with there being material information leakage, warranting policy efforts to better safeguard less informed investors.
This study looks at a public media station’s effort to build a “mutual aid journalism collaborative” connecting a cohort of community and ethnic media journalists, podcasters, bloggers, and social ...media influencers, most of whom had a mission of serving Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities in a U.S. metro region. Using a communication infrastructure theory framework to explore how this initiative affected local “storytelling networks,” this study draws from observations, interviews with project partners and station staff, focus groups and interviews with newsroom staff, and focus groups with community members. The study reflects on how the project conceived of community engagement and how it positioned itself as “mutual aid” from within a mainstream majority white news institution. It examines how the project challenged dominant norms around “objectivity” as it strengthened connections between public media and grassroots influencers, but also the limitations the project faced connecting to broader community constituencies.
Over the last 10 years, radio listeners have increasingly begun to tune in online – via podcasts, radio-on-demand and other digital distribution platforms. In the last couple of years, they have ...begun to interact with radio in theatres, cinemas and assorted make-shift gig venues, via mobile apps and social media platforms, and in the form of live performances, online videos, maps, tweets, blogs, forums, essays, photographs and interactive websites. Radio, like every other medium, is experimenting with ever more complex cross-media practices. These kinds of activities have been analysed at length with regard to commercial film, television and gaming, but much less is understood about radio-born approaches to transmedia content. This article considers how existing transmedia theories can contribute to our understanding of these new radio practices and also how radio-originated cross-media productions might challenge some of the ingrained assumptions we have about transmedia engagement.
