The traditional media landscape is under serious threat. Public service media in particular are under pressure from all sides, from authoritarian and populist governments, purely profit-driven media companies, and internet and social media giants. High time, then, to take up the cudgels for media diversity.

In Poland and Hungary authoritarian governments want to turn public service broadcasters into state-controlled mouthpieces. In the UK a populist government is claiming dominion over information and its interpretation. And in Switzerland, the public service media have for years been under fire from right-wing conservative circles, who have been using popular initiatives and opinion-making in the newspapers they’ve bought up in an attempt to put the SRG and frequently subsidised local radio and TV stations under pressure and pull the financial rug from under their feet.

It’s all about the prerogative of interpretation
These attempts to undermine the public service media are slowly eroding their prerogative of providing and interpreting information. This is a problem to the extent that these media emphasise objective, reliable and balanced reporting above all else. SRG radio and television stations, for example, always provide news on the basis of dual sources and try if possible to give all the political actors equal time and space in their reporting. If people are increasingly incapable of agreeing on objective facts and information, it’s more than just a problem. It’s a threat to democracy. You just have to look at America to see where that leads: dangerous parallel worlds and an ever-widening social divide.

The fourth estate
Jean-Jacques Rousseau already recognised the press as the fourth power of the state alongside the executive, legislative and judicial branches. The media can exercise a significant influence on political developments through their reporting and public debate. These days, however, many media are displaying worrying tendencies, influencing the population one way or another or permanently feeding them shallow information so that they become uncritical, apolitical and docile. Not to mention fake news and the echo chambers so often encountered in social media. Another problem is that people are increasingly used to consuming journalism for free. The risk is that they increasingly don’t see why they should pay fees for public service media, as is the case in Switzerland.

Important counterbalance to profit-driven media
When you consider that private media are dominated by economic interests and are primarily geared to sales and numbers of clicks, the importance of the public service media becomes even clearer. Not only do public service media serve as an important counterbalance to a predominantly business stance; they also provide a platform for people and issues that otherwise easily go unheard. All this shouldn’t obscure the fact that control mechanisms are also needed for public service broadcasters. When it comes to advertisers on their stations and online channels, for example, the way they’re structured tends to lead to bureaucracy and an overly strong tendency to entertainment programmes that shouldn’t be a primary part of their remit.