Marius Dragomir on ABC Radio

“There is a need for a new vision of public service media,” CMDS Director Marius Dragomir told Australian public service radio ABC.

The program, which featured Dragomir, Paul Thompson, chief executive and editor- in-chief of Radio New Zealand, Jacinta Mwende Maweu, senior lecturer in philosophy and media at the University of Nairobi, and host Julian Morrow, focused on the state of public service media around the world. It focused prominently on our State Media study, which is now available as the world’s most complete state media database.

Marius Dragomir talked in general about the public service media in the world, saying the model of independent PSM is on the brink of extinction for multiple reasons.

He talked about the three sets of criteria the state media database uses to determine where a media outlet falls in the state media matrix: funding, governance structure and editorial independence. He pointed out that editorial independence is the most important criteria, as you have examples of public media that are funded by the government but managed to preserve their editorial independence, and you have examples where the government manages the public media but they still are editorially independent.

He talked about the impact of the platform economy, both negative and positive, on public service media and on media in general. He called for a new vision for public service media and he gave examples of best practices, found in countries as different as Germany, Lithuania, Taiwan and South Korea.

As for the importance of public service media, he said that countries with good public service media had a healthier information system.

The recent crises such as the pandemic or the war in Ukraine show that countries with good psm have better sources of information for the citizens.

Moreover, he pointed out that public service media are part of the bigger global news content market.

Photo by Mehmet Turgut Kirkgoz on Unsplash