Changing Newsrooms 2021
Changing Newsrooms 2021
Hybrid Working and Improving Diversity Remain Twin Challenges for Publishers
Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Oxford University | Federica Cherubini, Nic Newman, and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
Published: 2021
The return to the office is underway but with COVID-19 lingering in a number of countries, progress remains uneven and uncertain. Many will find newsrooms very different places to the ones they left. For some, the office has disappeared completely.
This report, which is based on a survey of 132 senior industry leaders from 42 countries as well as a series of in-depth interviews, makes clear that ‘hybrid working’ will soon be the norm for the vast majority of journalists in many news organisations – with some people in the office and others working remotely – and that the industry is still struggling with attracting talent and addressing lack of diversity.
[Text sourced from the RISJ]
A Framework for Assessing the Role of Public Service Media Organizations in Countering Disinformation
A Framework for Assessing the Role of Public Service Media Organizations in Countering Disinformation
University of Helsinki, Finland; Cardiff University, UK; Central European University, Austria; Complutense University of Madrid, Spain | Minna Horowitz , Stephen Cushion , Marius Dragomir, Sergio Gutiérrez Manjón, and Mervi Panti
Published: 2021
Public service media (PSM) are widely acknowledged as part of the variety of solutions to disinformation. The remit of PSM, formed around values of universality, equality, diversity, accuracy and quality, implies a responsibility to fight disinformation by producing fact-based news content and finding anti-disinformation solutions. In this article, we introduce a framework for assessing how PSM organizations are able to counter disinformation in different contexts. Our normative framework provides a triangulation of contextual factors that determine the role of the PSM organization in the national environment, the activities carried out to fight disinformation and expert assessments of the potential of PSM to reduce the impact of disinformation. The framework is illustrated with analyses of PSM from the Czech Republic (CZE), Finland, Spain and the United Kingdom (UK).
[Text sourced from the Taylor and France Online]
British Public Service Broadcasting, the EU and Brexit
British Public Service Broadcasting, the EU and Brexit
Department of Journalism, Media and Culture, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK | Mike Berry, Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, Inaki Garcia-Blanco, Lucy Bennett and Joe Cable
Published: 2021
This paper analyses the historic role of Britain’s major public service broadcaster, the BBC, in reporting the European Union. To do this it combines a content analysis of two datasets of BBC broadcast and online coverage from 2007 and 2012 with a series of semi-structured interviews conducted with former and current senior BBC editors and journalists. The research finds that BBC coverage in the pre-referendum period was closely tied to major events – such as summits – and elite party conflict. These patterns in coverage were primarily a consequence of the lack of traditional news values inherent in most EU stories and the impact of the wider political and media landscape. The consequence of these patterns in coverage was to present audiences with a restricted, negative and largely conflictual picture of Britain’s relationship with the EU which is likely to have fuelled rather than inhibited the growth of Euroscepticism.
[Text sourced from the Taylor and France Online]
Mutual Aid and the “Messy Middle”: pushing public radio toward antiracism
Mutual Aid and the “Messy Middle”
Pushing public radio toward antiracism
The Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism | Andrea Wenzel
Published: 2021
Across the U.S., a number of public media stations have been undertaking initiatives with the aim of making their newsrooms and their journalism more inclusive of Black, Indigenous, and people of color and other marginalized communities. These initiatives have taken a variety of forms, including tracking the diversity of their sources; diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) workshops and trainings; and community engagement initiatives.
[Text sourced from the Tow Center]
News in Asia
News in Asia
Understanding news media in the world’s most important region
The Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas | Various authors
Published: 2021
In September 2021, the Judith Neilson Institute, an organisation based in Sydney but works with journalists and media organisations around the world, published its report, bringing together experts and institutions to provide a nuanced account of journalism in Asia. The report covers a comprehensively covers a broad range of topics, from changing news production and consumption to the impact of COVID-19 on the news media landscape and media development.
The Public Media Alliance is proud to have also contributed to such an important and timely project. In our chapter we explore the changing role of national broadcasters in Asia with a slide towards greater state control, and how public media is being redefined and normalised as a form of national broadcasting with less editorial independence – a key principle of public media. Read our chapter.
The State of State Media
The State of State Media
A Global Analysis of the Editorial Independence of State Media and an Introduction of a New State Media Typology
Center for Media, Data and Society, CEU Democracy Institute | Marius Dragomir and Astrid Söderström
Published: 2021
CMDS Director Marius Dragomir introduces a new tool to assess the editorial independence of the world’s state media and finds that nearly 80% of 546 state-administered media companies in 151 countries lack editorial independence.
[Text sourced from CMDS]
The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2021
Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2021
10th Edition
Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford | Nic Newman with Richard Fletcher, Anne Schulz, Simge Andı, Craig T. Robertson, and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
Published: 2021
This year’s report reveals new insights about digital news consumption based on a YouGov survey of over 92,000 online news consumers in 46 markets including India, Indonesia, Thailand, Nigeria, Colombia and Peru for the first time.
The report looks at the impact of coronavirus on news consumption and on the economic prospects for publishers. It looks at progress on new paid online business models, trust and misinformation, local news, impartiality and fairness in news coverage.
[Text sourced from the Reuters Institute]
Are public service media distinctive from the market?
Are public service media distinctive from the market?
Interpreting the political information environments of BBC and commercial news in the United Kingdom
Cardiff University | Stephen Cushion
Published: 2021
Public service media face an existential crisis. Many governments are cutting their budgets, while questioning the role and value of public service broadcasting because many citizens now have access to a wide range of media. This raises the question – do public service media supply a distinctive and informative news service compared to market-led media? Drawing on the concept of political information environment, this study makes an intervention into debates by carrying out a comparative content analysis of news produced by UK public service broadcasters and market-driven media across television, radio and online outlets (N = 1065) and interviewing senior editors about the routine selection of news. It found that almost all BBC news and commercial public service media platforms reported more news about politics, public affairs and international issues than entirely market-driven outlets. Online BBC news reported more informative topics than market-based media, which featured more entertainment and celebrity stories. The value of public service media was demonstrated on the United Kingdom’s nightly television news bulletins, which shone a light on the world not often reported, especially BBC News at Ten. Most market-driven media reported through a UK prism, excluding many countries and international issues. Overall, it is argued that the influence of public service media in the United Kingdom helps shape an information environment with informative news. The focus of the study is on UK media, but the conceptual application of interpreting a political information environment is designed to be relevant for scholars internationally. While communication studies have sought to advance more cross-national studies in recent years, this can limit how relevant studies are for debates in national political information environments. This study concludes by recommending more scholarly attention should be paid to theorising national policy dynamics that shape the political information environments of media systems within nations.
[Text sourced from the SAGE]
The Missing Middle: Reimagining a Future for Tweens, Teens, and Public Media
The Missing Middle
Reimagining a Future for Tweens, Teens, and Public Media
The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting | Monica Bulger, Mary Madden, Kiley Sobel, Patrick Davison
Published: 2021
The Joan Ganz Cooney Center and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have partnered to better understand how young people are engaging with media today in order to help public media better serve Gen Z. As part of our By/With/For Youth: Inspiring Next Gen Public Media Audiences, we spoke with tweens and teens across the U.S. about how they spend their time, what they find interesting, how they find new shows, apps, or videos, what issues are important to them, as well as what misconceptions adults have about youth. We asked them for their advice about what media producers should do if they want to engage with people their age, and how their lives have changed during the pandemic.
The report features the voices of a generation of youth who crave authenticity and who want to be more than passive consumers in this rapidly changing media landscape. The participating 10-17-year-olds described how they seamlessly move across platforms and devices depending on their moods, interests, and access to certain kinds of connectivity.
[Text sourced from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center]
Public service media in Europe: law, theory and practice
Public service media in Europe
Law, Theory and Practice
Routledge | Karen Donders
Publication date: June 2021
Contributing to a rethink of Public Service Media, this book combines theoretical insights and legal frameworks with practice, examining theory and policy development in a bottom-up manner.
It explores the practices of Public Service Media across Europe, assessing the rules that govern Public Service Media at both the EU and the National Member State level, identifying common trends, initiated by both the European Commission and individual countries, illustrating the context-dependent development of Public Service Media and challenging the theories of Public Service Broadcasting which have developed an ideal-type public broadcaster based on the well-funded BBC in an atypical media market. Seeking to further explore the actual practices of Public Service Media and make recommendations for the development of more sustainable policies, this book offers case studies of rules and practices from across a variety of EU Member States to consider the extent to which public broadcasters are making the transition to public media organisations, and how public broadcasters and governments are shaping Public Service Media together.
This book is a must-read for all scholars who take an interest in Public Service Media, media policy and media systems literature at large. It will also be of interest to practitioners working in government, Public Service Media and commercial media.
(Text sourced via Routledge)