Link between public media and healthy democracy

[misanthrope]

Be careful assigning correlation and causation in this study. It's likely that healthier democracies create more public media, not the inverse.

https://www.niemanlab.org/2022/01/do-countries-with-better-funded-public-media-also-have-healthier-democracies-of-course-they-do/

What should concern us more is the U.S. classification as a "flawed democracy." Don't we want to strive to a "more perfect union"?

Excerpt:

“But Josh,” you might be saying, “the United States is different.” And that’s true! With a large population, the world’s lingua franca, and lots of money, there’s no shortage of private media companies eager to serve up whatever the market demands. If your goal is to give people access to high-quality media, you can indeed count on the private sector more in the U.S. (330 million people, $62,997 GDP/capita) than in Botswana (2.3 million people, $18,064 GDP/capita), or even countries like Norway, which are plenty rich but still small and relatively language-isolated.

But the tradeoff, of course, is that market-driven news organizations act differently than public-supported ones. There are positive elements to both, but the BBC is unlikely to start pushing ivermectin because it thinks there’s a market opportunity on the far right.

[misanthrope]

1. I am surprised there has been little feedback on this

There is a wealth of media reference on this site, to the point most of the conversation here seems directly driven by cable news. It would seem this study would naturally dovetail with DU's interests. I guess not.

[ck4829]

2. We've got a media that seeks access to power vs holding the powerful accountable. That's a problem.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142897177

[misanthrope]

3. U.S. vs British

In a long-ago discussion on journalistic attitudes toward power, it was noted that when politicos spoke with British journalists, it was presumed everything out of their mouth was "on the record." They contrasted it with many of the U.S.'s top journalists who would often ask politicians in interviews, "Is that on the record?"

The presumptions in each case speaks volumes about their societies and professional cultures. Access to power is a secondary concern, or even less, to a journalist who stresses transparency and accuracy as utmost. Those who are concerned about quoting inadvertently, or souring further access, aren't being a reporter. They're a p.r. hack. In a lot of ways, Bob Woodward is a prime example of this. He is rumored to have an extensive system of filing information over the decades. At the same time, he alludes to the things he's been privy to, yet never made public until it is advantageous to him, if ever.

A journalist should be insulted that any public figure would feel they can manipulate the reporter in that way.