Public media is under attack in Washington, but a new report by Rodney Benson and Matthew Powers of New York University examines how expanding, not cutting, federal funding can actually promote quality, independent journalism.
Public Media and Political Independence: Lessons for the Future of Journalism from Around the World was released Tuesday during a panel discussion that featured several prominent media scholars and journalists.
The study analyzes public media systems in 14 democratic countries, from Australia to Finland and France to Japan, examining how they fund public media and ensure its autonomy, protecting it from partisan political meddling. At the panel, Matt Powers, one of the co-authors of the report, pointed out that “In every single country studied, public media provide higher quality and more public affairs coverage, wider range of viewpoints and more critique of government than commercial counterparts.”