Public Broadcasting: The Latin American Exception

BECERRA, MARTÍN

The Political Economy of Communication

IAMCR

Lugar: Oregon; Año: 2019 vol. 7 p. 105 - 109

From an agnostic and somewhat cynical perspective, there is no way for Latin American staterun media to win back hearts because there was not, as in Europe, a longstanding public media tradition. The positive experiences of Latin American public media were and are unstable (Safar and Pasquali, 2006; Gómez Orozco, 2002; Becerra and Mastrini, 2017; Bustamante and de Miguel, 2005). More than this; if public media means pluralism, free and open audience access, high quality news, general diversity of content and independence from governments, advertisers and other economic influences, then there are no such institutions in Latin America. State-run media in Latin America have no public function, as they have in Europe, North America, Japan or South Africa. In fact, wherever they exist, state-run media in Latin America depend directly on governments.