What is the role of government in ensuring that media meets the needs of a democratic society?

Public service media was created in response to a historical moment, in which new and disruptive technology (first radio, and then television) emerged alongside the consolidation of a new political order, liberal democracy. Today, the emerging disruptive technology is AI and the liberal order is under attack. How can we apply the lessons of the past to addressing today’s challenges? And how can the experiences of public media providers in Denmark and South Korea inform American public media’s next chapter?

What is the role of government in ensuring that media meets the needs of a democratic society? In News for Free, Joel Simon, the founding director of the Journalism Protection Initiative at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, surveys the many countries around the world where public media is part of the cultural and political fabric to assess how significant government’s investment in media should be, and how this partnership can meet the challenges of technological disruption and anti-democratic elements.