CEO ANNUAL MESSAGE

How collaboration is fuelling the mission of public media & PMA

29 December 2025

As 2025 comes to an end, PMA’s CEO Kristian Porter reflects on a busy year which saw many challenges for public media but also successful projects for PMA.

A man and woman stand on stage with a big visual screen behind them. They are shaking hands and smiling.

PMA's CEO, Kristian Porter, with Virginia Bazán-Gil, Director of RTVE Archives, and President of FIAT/IFTA. Credit: FIAT/IFTA

By Kristian Porter, CEO of the Public Media Alliance

Dear PMA members, partners and friends, 

I want to thank you all for your ongoing support throughout 2025.

And what a confronting year it has been. From the drastic cuts to federal funding for public media by the Trump administration to the latest attempts to undermine the independence of the Lithuanian public broadcaster, public service media around the world have experienced ramped up political pressure, slashed or precarious public funding, an increasingly weaponised debate and hostile atmosphere, curtailed and curated access to warzones, and threats that could ultimately undermine their ability to hold truth to power. The situation is truly global, with Argentina, France, Ghana, Israel, South Africa, Slovakia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom all among the countries with public media under pressure.

Read more: PMA’s 2025 Highlights

It can’t be ignored that many of the challenges faced by public service media in 2025 – organisations bound by a core set of democratic values to independently and impartially inform, educate and entertain – come from those fearful of being held to account.

But these threats don’t exist in isolation. They sit alongside longstanding pressures such as the speed of technological development, audience fragmentation, and the climate crisis, the pace of which are challenging public media’s ability adapt, let alone afford to adapt. Examples of this can be found in our latest PSM and AI report, where we highlight the compromises some organisations make when procuring and using AI tools. Another has been demonstrated by how PSMs are in some cases providing direct aid in addition to their tireless work to provide lifesaving information as hurricane and cyclone seasons intensify, as recently experienced by our members in Jamaica and Sri Lanka.

More on Emergency Broadcasting

Public Service Media as Critical Infrastructure

18th August 2025

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How DVB reached audiences in earthquake-hit Myanmar

10th June 2025

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PSM Unpacked | Disaster preparedness

29th May 2025

The simplistic irony of these challenges is that they come at a time when the need for independent public service media is, to us supporters, more evident than ever – as a remedy to dis- and misinformation, to shed light on corruption, to counter populism and promote social cohesion over polarisation. Yet trust in so-called legacy media is in decline and audiences are increasingly turning to alternative, often more opinion-led sources. Media literacy about what it is we all stand to lose with the loss of public media, is vital and urgent.

But not all hope is lost. Democracy survives where public media thrives – and as the threats to public media become increasingly shared globally, so too does the importance of working together to protect these unique institutions.

For the Public Media Alliance, collaboration has been a guiding principle throughout 2025, fuelling our mandate to connect, support and advocate for public service media.

It’s imperative that PSM learn from one another, share knowledge, collaborate, and combine where they can develop compelling new narratives to make the case for a viable and sustainable future. We’ve seen this across Europe, where the case for public media as critical infrastructure is increasingly being deployed during a time of heightened tensions; we’ve seen the launch of cross-industry factchecking initiatives in Taiwan; the ongoing Public Spaces Incubator project; and marked increases in young audiences turning to public media for news in Belgium.

These examples add fuel to the reason why, for us at the Public Media Alliance, collaboration has been a guiding principle throughout 2025, fuelling our mandate to connect, support and advocate for public service media. This has been crucial in a year when existential cuts to USAID and other state-led aid agencies have undermined the availability and viability of so many independent news outlets and civil society organisations.

As part of efforts to build information resilience around disasters in the Caribbean, PMA hosted a data journalism hackathon for DRR in May 2025.

It means that we have focussed on combining our expertise with others, ensuring that our members have greater access to a global community of public service media supporters, academics and consultants.

Together, we have published two industry reports on PSM and AI with a focus on procurement, governance and geopolitics. We have run workshops on responsible AI for 11 public broadcasters across the Asia-Pacific region, hosted numerous thematic roundtables (on journalist safety, prominence, in-language content, and public value, among others), and provided broadcast skills and archival training for members. Elsewhere we provided extensive training in Data Journalism for Caribbean Disaster Preparedness – with funding from UNESCO IPDC – and expanded our Global Grant and Trainer Grant schemes thanks to the generous support from the Grace Wyndham Goldie (BBC) Trust Fund, connecting more public media than ever before.

We have stepped up efforts to work with fellow civil society organisations and unions in our advocacy, shared expertise in responding to consultations, and signed an MOU with our partners at the International Federation of Television Archives (FIAT/IFTA) and others to ensure we have the breadth of skills required to support PSM best. And now, alongside our newest member, RTVE, we will be looking to expand our work into Spanish speaking regions of the world.

This year, we also co-hosted the MediaStrong symposium in London, a cross-industry event focussed on mental wellbeing for newsrooms and journalists. And, of course, we continue to work with colleagues to speak out in support of public service media via our role in the Media Freedom Coalition’s Consultative Network, the Global Task Force for public media, and the soon-to-be launched Indigenous Public Media (IPM) group.

This collaborative approach doesn’t dilute our core output, it enhances it. I am privileged to work with an incredibly talented and passionate team who work tirelessly to work with individual members and provide weekly updates on PSM issues via our PSM Weekly, PMA Briefing, and On Our Radar services. But as with press freedom, as the pressures on public media grow, the more they are shared. We must capitalise on our shared values and work together to protect this precious, unique set of institutions, before it is too late.

In the coming weeks we will be hosting an AGM for our membership leads and announcing more details on plans for 2026. Keep a look out for more information via your inboxes.