Making the case for public media: PMA’s CEO on 2024

27 December 2024

While 2024 was a busy year for public media and for PMA, much of the themes and topics we have been exploring and working on will continue into the next year, as we continue to make the case for public media. 

But what remains our most vital work, is our ability to quickly respond to and advocate for public media under pressure. Whether that’s publicly raising concerns on issues of media capture and journalist safety, requests for support and advice, or responding to government enquiries about funding models, the alliance remains a vital tool in uniting PSM in support of one another and their shared values.  

In January and in the lead-up to the new year, the PMA team and I will reflect on the challenges that have impacted so many PSM in 2024. But for now, let’s take a look at just some of the work we’ve accomplished over the past year.  

Work on AI 

The explosion of Generative AI products in 2024, and their deployment across the media space has raised profound questions for public media entities: Can such programmes be safely and effectively used by public service media? And, what repercussions might their use have for public media?  

Several PMA projects explored this theme. The launch of our PSM & AI page continues to be a destination for the latest AI-related news and an active resource for AI guidelines being adopted by PSM. In September, we partnered with PTS Taiwan to coordinate an AI symposium in Taipei, bringing together AI-leaders from across the global public media industry. We also produced workshops in Johannesburg for five African public broadcasters and in Kuala Lumpur alongside our partners Develop AI exploring Responsible AI.  

AI will continue to be a point of focus for PMA. We are working again with Develop AI to offer our members discounted rates for Responsible AI Masterclasses. And in 2025, we will publish the results from our global study – in partnership with BRAID and Dr Kate Wright of the University of Edinburgh – looking at how public media are best utilising AI, especially in the newsroom.  

Accessibility, Relevance & Reach 

Our work on AI is centred around considering PSM’s responsibilities to their primary stakeholders – the public. But another aspect we focussed on regarded PSM’s accessibility, relevance, and reach. As audiences continue to move away from traditional viewing and news consumption habits, how PSM remain accessible, valued, and relevant remains one of their biggest challenges. How a regulatory environment can foster a media ecosystem where PSM remain prominent and visible is one aspect. But for PSM to have real impact, audiences have to want to access PSM content, and to do that, their content needs to be relevant.  

Two of our member-only roundtables explored these themes – firstly, through a discussion on prominence, looking at examples from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the UK; and secondly, through a discussion on reaching young audiences with election coverage led by Belgium’s RTBF.  

This latter subject was the theme for a panel PMA hosted in Kuala Lumpur at the Radiodays Asia conference, as well as a workshop for UK regulator Ofcom in December, which included several Nordic public broadcasters.  

But remaining relevant and reaching as wide an audience as possible increasingly means relying – and at times, overlying – on third-party platforms. The challenge here is not only one of scale, but one of bargaining power and being able to clearly assert the brand of trusted PSM and direct audiences back to their own platforms.  

Ensuring young people are able to tell what information is accurate and trustworthy, and what is not, has repercussions for PSM.

Attempts to protect the prominence and fair compensation for the use of PSM content has led to the introduction of various Bills, spearheaded in countries such as Australia and Canada. But the pushback by companies such as Meta, especially in Canada where news brands have effectively been censored with wide ranging implications for those looking for reliable information, especially at times of crisis. 

Much of PMA’s advocacy has focussed on these issues, with the publication of a research paper for the DG8 about how PSM can and are tackling this issue. This will also remain a major issue for PMA throughout 2025.  

Indigenous Public Media 

The release of our report, How public service media reaches and reflects Indigenous communities also built on themes of relevance, reach and accessibility, looking at the imperative for PSM to ensure they are serving Indigenous Peoples. The report brought together nine PSM from eight countries or territories, and exposed the shortcomings, as well as achievements in this space.  

While each broadcaster has their own relevant context, or funding setup, or political backdrop, solutions and paths forward can be better achieved as a collective, by working together.

It also built on our work towards UNESCO’ Global Indigenous Media Study – an effort to ensure the implementation by states of Article 16 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. We were in Paris in November for the Expert Meeting, assisting in the development of recommendations. PMA will continue to be involved in this work in 2025 and will also be using its network to foster greater collaboration between public broadcasters with Indigenous departments.  

Media Literacy 

But while much of our focus was on how PSM can remain relevant and accessible, another pillar of our work was media literacy. In an information ecosystem where there is so much mis- and disinformation, our project, Building a Media Literate Generation, put the emphasis on reaching young people, educators, and media workers by implementing workshops, lesson plans, an online library of resources, and roundtables aimed at bridging the gap between these areas. The project reached hundreds of children, in eight different educational institutions across Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago and Guyana. We hope to replicate the success of this project across other countries in the years ahead.  

Ensuring young people are able to tell what information is accurate and trustworthy, and what is not, has repercussions for PSM. How can they demonstrate themselves as trusted and reliable sources of news and information? This carries added significance given the role of PSM during crises, and a new UNESCO IPDC-funded project next year – Data Journalism in Action: Empowering Caribbean Disaster Preparedness – will build on this theme.