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Public service media (PSM) have long been seen as the necessary counterweight to the failures of a market model. Given the rise of private corporate power over communications systems, PSM have long been claimed to the be the 'heart of a heartless world' – spaces dominated not by the relentless logic of capital but by broader ambitions that involve citizen participation, social improvement and knowledge acquisition. This article offers a different interpretation. It argues that at their very best, PSM have improved an otherwise anaemic commercial landscape; at their worst, they are simply an accessory to state actors and contaminated media markets that reproduce elite power. Media practices and institutions based on the public service idea all too often lack the accountability and indeed the fundamental democratic oversight of the publics in whose name they operate. This article seeks first to contrast the values and structures of public service media with those of wholly commercial models and illustrates some of the 'defensive' arguments and initiatives that have been developed in response to threats to PSM. The article then explores a series of arguments that problematise what is often a reflexive defence of PSM. It considers whether being non-commercial necessarily positions an institution as pro-public and focuses on the role of the state in the creation of PSM institutions. It argues that the gap between normative accounts of public service and their institutional structures is not an accident or an aberration but reflects the structural imbalances of power built into PSM. Finally, the article analyses the different ways in which 'the public' has been conceptualised and deployed in the operational models of PSM, often as the 'masses' or as individuals in need of enlightenment or as sovereign consumers, but rarely as active agents of social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores prospects for media reform in Great Britain, following the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the press. Lord Justice Brian Henry Leveson proposes the regulation of media ethics by voluntarily becoming a member of an independent regulatory structure. According to the authors, aside from addressing unethical and irresponsible journalism, good journalism should also be stimulated through incentives.

This paper examines the relationship between media and civil society in the UK and Ireland in relation to news content and ownership. We suggest a number of ways in which civil society associations can play a role in ensuring a healthy diversity of viewpoints and arenas for dissent in the media. We propose a form of tax incentive in the case of local mergers, or joint operations, that increase relations with civil society in order to facilitate and maintain levels of news coverage in the public interest. Reliance solely on fully commercial enterprises for the delivery of news and current affairs journalism - that purports to be for the public good and in the public interest - has not proved satisfactory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The propaganda model is a powerful tool for explaining systematic flaws in media coverage. But does it explain the cracks and tensions within the commercial media that are capable of arising at moments of political crisis and elite disagreement? To what extent does the model privilege a flawless structuralist account of media power at the expense of focusing on contradictory dynamics inside the capitalist media? This article looks at a key moment where critical media content was generated by a mainstream media organization: the coverage of the run-up to the Iraq War in the British tabloid paper, the Daily Mirror in 2003. It reflects on the consequences of such a moment for resisting corporate media power and asks whether it suggests the need for a revision of the propaganda model or, rather, provides further validation of its relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the growing interest in the organization and regulation of media industries, there is relatively little public discussion of the material processes through which media policy is developed. At a time of considerable change in the global media environment, new actors and new paradigms are emerging that are set to shift the balance of power between public and private interests in the policy-making process. This article focuses on some core challenges to the pluralist conception of public policy-making that still dominates today and considers whether key aspects of UK and American media policy-making can be said to be competitive, accessible, transparent or rational. Based on interviews with a wide range of ‘stakeholders’, the article assesses the power dynamics that underlie media policy-making and argues that the process is skewed by the taken-for-granted domination of market ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by Sari Pietikäinen and Jaana Hujanen on the changing media landscape in Finland, and another by Nick Redfern on British cinema.

Recent revisions of media regulation and legislation have emphasized diversity and pluralism as key objectives. Both the Federal Communication Commission's rewriting of broadcasting ownership rules in 2003 and the United Kingdom government's 2003 Communications Act insist that the public interest is best met through providing a dynamic, market-led approach to communications regulation. This article highlights definitions of diversity and pluralism that are increasingly ubiquitous in legislative and regulatory instruments that seek to "modernize" media systems in our present "communications cornucopia." This approach involves conceptualizing media diversity and media pluralism as twin outcomes of strategies designed to maximize consumer choice and market competition. The article argues that we need to challenge the assumption that meaningful forms of diversity can be brought forth only through market structures and questions the validity of quantitative assessments of media sectors that equate choice and competition with diversity. The article suggests that we need to win back a notion of diversity that is based on citizens' engagement with and interrogation of the world rather than the idea that diversity can be measured simply through the number of organizations and channels in the contemporary media environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes the Labour Party's initiatives in promoting Great Britain's mass media both for export purposes and for re-equipping the country with a more contemporary image. Assessment of the party's encouragement of British creativity; Stages of the party's promotional approach for mass media.