Civic Participation and Independence from Political Power: two requirements of Public Service Broadcasters in Spain

Abstract

Media and particularly Public Media are constantly asking for independence from politics. Their professionals and citizens share this demand. European Institutions and academics highlight the essential role of this independence for Public Broadcasters in order to accomplish their public service remit. Some authors (Hortz, 2016; Hasebrink, 2012; Carpentier, 2011) point out the need of a bigger effort to offer citizens more possibilities of real participation in the decision-making process of Public Media, because this helps with the goal of independence. In this context, the research study was carried out with the following objectives: a) to obtain evidence of demand from citizens (young people and adults) for the independence of Spanish public service broadcasters and of citizen assessment of the level of independence of these broadcasters; b) to obtain evidence of citizen perception of opportunities to participate in the governance of public service broadcasters and their use of channels of participation; c) to analyse the relationship between public participation in the decision-making bodies of public service broadcasters (as a governance tool) and the reputation of those broadcasters. The work method involved carrying out a quantitative study (the survey) and a documentary-structural analysis of the Spanish national public service broadcaster and the 10 regional public service broadcasters to be able to take the third methodological step of finding a correlation between the independence of these public service broadcasters and their reputation, as backed by evidence in both cases