On 19 November 2026, we’ll publish a new report called 'Reaching Everyone – Public Service News and its Unfinished Mission in a Disrupted World', focusing on the challenges PSM face in reaching all audiences at a time of deep audience polarization and fragmentation.

The below exchange is an extract of an interview with Prof. Rasmus Kleis Nielsen of the University of Copenhagen Department of Communication, former Director of the Reuters Institute (2018-2024).

Download the report from this website from 19 November. 

Q: Is it fair to say that the audiences have become more polarized in recent years? If they did, where globally? How would you describe Europe on this map? 

A: Polarization, at least in societies that are more or less free, reflects citizens and politicians exercising their fundamental right to disagree, and in that sense, it's not intrinsically a bad thing. Often when people talk about polarization as a bad thing, on closer inspection, what they mean is that they think other people should disagree with them less.

Polarization can sometimes produce social problems and political problems. It can also erode broader trust and civic connections in situations where it isn't simply that people disagree strongly with one another, but that they think very poorly of their fellow citizens because of their differences of opinion.

And I suppose that public service media are in a tricky place: on the one hand, they are by design meant to serve everybody. And in that sense the idea of taking sides in polarized issues seems self-defeating and contrary to their mission. At the same time, they are also expected to represent certain values that are considered to be defining of the country in which they exist. And that, of course, leaves them in a tricky place when those values are being disputed by large parts of the population, where they may feel they have to stand up for certain values, but also face a situation in which a significant part of the population, in some cases, perhaps even the majority, disagree with those values.

Q: Many European public broadcasters struggle not only because of the budget cuts, often promoted by far right forces, but also because of declining audiences. What do global polls tell us about the role and place of PSM on the audience’s media consumption menus?

A: I think you're highlighting something that I personally think is in many ways more concerning and often overlooked. In social science, we simplify and exaggerate by talking about two different divides. One divide is between partisans of different persuasions who have strong political views and violently disagree with one another. The second divide is between those people who are highly engaged in politics and news and a large part of the public who feels distant or even alienated from news and politics. I think it's useful to think of these two divides as separate because they are different and they are driven by different kinds of relations with both news and politics.

Frankly, the problem that public service media have, and which is not unique to them, is that a growing part of the public seems to feel that the news they offer is not particularly relevant, engaging or useful, and perhaps even alienating, off-putting and depressing. In that sense, one can do perfectly impartial informative journalism interviewing a succession of spokespeople for every major political party in a parliament. But from the point of view of citizens who may have very low trust in those parties, who may struggle to see the connection between what those politicians are talking about and her own life and concerns, may not feel represented – that news can be impartial and deeply unappealing at the same time.

Q: What is the main challenge for PSM to reach vast audiences, including those who don't regard themselves as liberal at all?

A: In a sense, while I do think the polarization discussion is important and I'm glad EBU members are considering it, I personally think the issues of relevance and value are probably more fundamental and more challenging for both the mission and legitimacy of public service media in our societies.

I would separate it out in a couple of different dimensions. I think one is to try to be as clear as possible about the difference between hostile audiences and indifferent audiences. These are very different problems. Hostile audiences are essentially people who see media in general or public service media in particular as the enemy. And these people are going to be extremely hard to reach.

You can get to a point where it becomes very hard to reach people who are constitutively hostile to what you have to offer and are not willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. At the same time, indifferent audiences are not people who think you're the enemy. They're just people who don't care, who don't think you have anything to offer. And that's quite a different challenge. It is not about overcoming hostility or counterbalancing the narrative of people who paint public service media as hostile, but more about demonstrating value and relevance in people's lives.

I'm sorry to be simple-minded about this, but I just don't see any other way of doing that than by meeting people where they are culturally…We have reams of research about the biases in who gets to feature in the news, among gender and class and other dimensions, urban, rural etc. So one part of it is trying to ensure that the news, in addition to covering communities who happen to be urban, and perhaps also highly educated and affluent, also covers the world from the point of view of other communities who don't share that perspective, view or experiences.

And the second one is distribution: it's very understandable why public service media have legitimate self-interest in trying to ensure that they provide the public with their service, primarily through channels that public service media themselves control: broadcasts, features on websites, apps, streaming platforms.

I understand that – I think it's a fair and legitimate interest. But we also have to recognize that across much of Europe, from country to country, somewhere between 35 and 60% of the public have not gone to any news site or app in the past week for news. They get their news via social media, video sharing sites, search engines, AI chatbots and other intermediary platforms. So it seems imperative to me that if one wants to overcome this, then it's about meeting people where they are culturally and in terms of communication.

I would stress again, I think this is different from trying to reach hostile audiences, which in general are often much smaller than those that are indifferent. And in particular amongst young people. While there are issues that have been so intense that parts of a younger generation may see PSM as essentially hostile to their views or in sort of in cahoots with older generations' views, I would say the problem of indifference is much more pronounced with younger people than the problem of hostility.