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New information technologies, liberalizing policies and rapidly changing societies from monoto multicultural entail serious consequences for the prospects of European public service broadcasters (PSB) in a network society. The European concept of PSB as a comprehensive and universal service is challenged by both European Union and national authorities at three levels: (1) mission and programme task (comprehensive or complementary programming?); (2) organization (central organization or 'distributed public service'?); and (3) financing (licence fee, advertising or 'state aid'?). There are pressures towards a more 'pure' model of public service broadcasting and/or towards de-institutionalization of PSB and 'distributed public service'. Recent pleadings for (e.g. in the Netherlands) and practices of (e.g. in New Zealand) new PSB policy directions will be evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article monitors news coverage on the European Union and EU-related matters in terms of news frames and news discourses adopted in online versions of seven quality newspapers (six European and one American) over a period of four months (December 2001-March 2002). During this period the EU Council Summit was held in Laeken, Belgium, on 14 and 15 December 2001. The selection of the national quality press outlets is carried out on the basis of a general, significant readership and centrality to the current media debate on European issues in the country. The seven countries are interesting cases in terms of their varying role in the history of European integration as well as their current attitude towards the EU. The research literature identifies five recurrent news frames (conflict, human interest, economic consequences, morality and responsibility): this article assesses the relative visibility of each of these news frames in the coverage on the EU and its institutions in the news outlets under study. Furthermore, it asks which discourse is more dominant when it comes to the shaping of European identity as portrayed in the news reporting. Four types of discourse (culture, expansion, in- and exclusion and power) are examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]