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The communication of the accountability of European public service media

Abstract:

Accountability is a compromise for public service media organizations in the European Union due to the different laws that force compliance with this exercise. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate how these organizations present their management results to their respective citizens and whether the relationship they establish with the citizens is based on transparency, openness and dialogue. In order to do so, our methodological approach was directed at a qualitative analytical model based on the application of a system of indicators that allows for the identification of the direction towards which these institutions are moving not only to comply with the different transparency and accountability regulations, but also to satisfy the demands of their main stakeholders. This tool will be applied to five corporations (BBC, RTÉ, ARD, France TV and RTVE), selected according to the following criteria: public ownership and free-to-air signal, membership in the European Broadcasting Union, similar position in international indicators, normative framework on access to information, and the representation of the three media models established by Hallin and Macini. The achieved results prove that the analysed public organizations show a generalized interest in making their actions transparent; however, not all of them offer a good level of accessibility to information nor update it frequently.