What is the Public Media Alliance?
The Public Media Alliance is the largest global association of public service media organisations.
We have a specific remit to support and advocate for the role and importance of these organisations – otherwise known as public service broadcasters – in society and democracy.
We are a non-profit organisation funded by over fifty public media organisations, including the BBC, CBC/Radio-Canada, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF), the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) and Thai PBS.
Find out more: What is public service media?
Founded in 1945, the organisation today has a global membership, offering members an equal opportunity to exchange ideas, views, and best practice in public media. Our vision is a world where the public can continue to access free, independent, engaging and representative national and international media wherever they are.
We support and work with these organisations to improve standards, train journalists, and provide support if they face pressure from governments, funding issues or attacks on their reporters and staff.
Our diverse work also includes facilitating knowledge and travel exchanges for media workers, contributing to research, and providing training, roundtables, and workshops for our members worldwide.
PMA’s most important role is advocacy. We support and promote the values of public media and the necessity of press freedom as challenges like media capture, political interference in the media, and disinformation grow worldwide. We also produce a podcast, Media Uncovered, which explores topical issues and innovations from the world of public service media and press freedom.
We work with our members, civil society, and others to raise awareness and tackle key challenges. We are members of the Media Freedom Coalition’s (MFC) Consultative Network – where our representative acts as Co-Chair. We are also the Secretariat of the Global Task Force for public media and on the Steering Committee for the Public Broadcasters International (PBI) conference.
The Public Media Alliance started life as the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association (CBA), founded in February 1945 at an event called the Commonwealth Broadcasting Conference.
Held in London, the inaugural conference brought together representatives from several broadcasters that had cooperated closely in reporting World War II.
The CBA began with six members, and by 1974 had adopted a charter, and the membership met every two years in different parts of the Commonwealth. Membership was restricted to public service broadcasters in Commonwealth countries, but in 1995 it was broadened to allow commercial companies with a PSB commitment and PSBs from countries outside the Commonwealth to join as affiliates.
In 2014, the membership of the CBA unanimously voted for the organisation to become known as the Public Media Alliance, and to allow full and equal membership of PSBs and PSMs from any country in the world.
We are now a proudly global organisation, with membership from countries including South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan and the United States of America.
Why?
At a time of growing nationalism, populism, and disinformation, protecting the core values of public service media has never been so important.
These fundamental values underpin informed democracy and allow public media organisations to hold power to account on behalf of the public who pay for it via a tax or licence fee. These values include editorial independence, accuracy, transparency, impartiality, independent regulation, diversity, and universality.
The core function of PSM is to therefore support an informed, connected and engaged electorate by providing trusted verified news and current affairs, free of political, partisan, or commercial influences.
What we do
Our aim is to build consensus, stand together and advocate a united global voice for public service media. We do this through:
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