Public Service Media Journalism and Democracy in the Digital Age

In the digital age, when we witness the rapid proliferation of platforms and services, European societies continue debating the role and the future of public service media （PSM）. In the new digital environment, public service broadcasting/media, which for a number of social and cultural reasons have been at the core of the European media system, faces the capital question--What democracy do public operators strive for and how can they accomplish it？ PSM has to be at the vanguard of the complex process of media transformation in the information society and particularly of the formation of novel journalistic culture which besides the values of ethical and innovative content should also serve the principles of good and efficient governance.

Trends in Corporate Social Responsibility Among Public Service Media in Europe

Corporate Social Responsibility （CSR） is the voluntary commitment taken over by companies in social, economic, and environmental terms. The aim is to counteract impacts generated by their activity. While the concept is genuinely linked to the private sector, this self-regulated system has been steadily introduced in some European public service media. Indeed, CSR is one of the mechanisms to face the challenges of the sector, both the financial crisis and the lack of trust. Seven public service media from the European Union are reporting--via their websites--on their CSR strategies. Annual reports on their performance are issued by the German ZDF, the Spanish RTVE, the Portuguese RTP, the British BBC, the Irish RTI~, the Finnish YLE, and the Italian RAI. Also, four other corporations--VRT and RTBF from Belgium, FT from France, and DR from Denmark include a section on corporate social responsibility on their annual reports. The aim of this paper is to know which of the trends in CSR are dominant among public service media in Europe, namely economy, environment, and society. The content analysis of corporate reports is the method used for the research.

Seminar on Media and NGOs in Public Diplomacy Held in Beijing

The Seminar on Media and NGOs in Public Diplomacy, co-sponsored by the Chinese Association for International Understanding (CAFIU) and China Foundation for Peace and Development (CFPD), was held in the morning of April 17th in Beijing. More than 30 experts and scholars, media and NGO representatives from India, Japan, Pakistan,

On Modern Censorship in Public Service Broadcasting

The paper focuses on the manifestations, causes, and consequences of the failure of so-called public service media, especially in the field of news and journalism. Those media that, unlike private media, are funded from public sources. The public service, which citizens are obliged to pay through taxes or direct fees, is supposed to provide quality information, to produce and to disseminate content that satisfies the democratic, cultural, and social needs of the society, with a task at hand to preserve media pluralism. The major obligation of public service media is usually for them to provide objective, validated, and balanced information for people, so they can choose freely where they stand on any given issue. However, examples of the failures of two public service media operating in the Central European Czech Republic, Czech Radio （？Ro）, and Czech Television （？T）, as well as the failures of the statutory control boards of these media, show that the required high quality public service prescribed by law, especially in the field of news and journalism and other programs, is not always kept. Public service media may be partisan and apply elements of modern censorship. This is a censorship that the law of the public service media does not impose and does not allow to carry out. Such censorship, which is a result of unilateral subordination of the influence of specific political parties, interest groups, and opinion streams, is reflected in information manipulation, purposeful agenda development, selection of information and information sources, spiral of silence, in the preference of some political parties, partisan, interest interpretation, and adaptation of reality in broadcasting.