This text is based on a speech delivered by EBU Director of News, Liz Corbin, at the AI Forum, on 25 March 2026, in Brussels. 

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the future of public service media and trying to envision the new path forward, in particular for news and journalism. 

I’ve been pondering what I want from it, as an individual, and how we deliver it as journalists and media professionals. And when you strip everything back, what’s left are the values and rules we live by as public service media, and whether they’re fit for the future.

I want to share some thoughts with you that I hope will spark a timely discussion. 

Public service media's red lines

As public service media, we have fundamental red lines, unbreakable rules. 

But are we thinking hard enough about what happens when those red lines no longer make sense? Because it’s becoming increasingly clear that serving the public properly might mean we have to cross or even redraw them.

Let's explore three core principles: our editorial values, the law, and our relationship with commercial revenues.

But first, let’s think about what we each want personally from the news. 

How do people consume news?

Someone asked me recently what time I get up. The truth is, I never get up at the same time. With work travel, family and other duties I don’t have a set alarm or even a morning routine. I also don’t have time to read more than a few headlines and news alerts. 

Yet the TV and radio, which I can consume when I’m doing other things, always have the headlines at the top of the hour, and if I miss them, well, I miss them. But I’m the exception: normal people with routines probably don’t face this issue.

Let’s take another morning scenario: the school run. Fifteen minutes in the car, same time every day – let’s say it’s 8.10 to 8.25. You’re a captive audience, but you’re also missing the top-of-the-hour headlines. The podcasts are out of date, and your kids refuse to listen to them. So, in fact, that’s not working for you, either.

But isn’t this where AI should be helping? You need a 12-minute, up-to-date news summary in a format the kids will also find engaging. That means some of the darker parts of the news agenda sensitively presented and the latest on media news, because that’s what matters to you. 

Perhaps you’re an international family, you want news from your home country. Or you’re all learning Spanish, so you want to hear some news in that language. And of course, you want it from a news source you can trust.

In what universe is that not 3,000 times more useful that what traditional models are currently offering? Isn’t that what we should be providing: news tailored to audience members?

Maybe you don’t need a news summary, but you do want to better understand something you heard, read or saw earlier. And those kids in the back – they’ve got some questions too. So, who should be providing that service in the car? Google? ChatGPT? The carmaker? Or should it be the public service media you and your family already know and trust?

Personalized in-car news content

The fact is, you could provide this service tomorrow. The EBU already has the technology, and with your content we have the power to deliver it. We even have a car company knocking on our door asking us to do just that.

So what’s the hold-up? Quite rightly, public service media has its red lines.

Most of you will be familiar with the ‘four eyes’ editorial principle in news. Every piece of content should be seen and approved by at least two people before being published. 

But AI-generated news, whether a personalized news bulletin or a chat assistant, is not checked by anyone. The technology is rigorously tested and reviewed, but ultimately the content goes to the audience in your name without anyone from your company seeing it. 

This is already happening. The content comes with box-ticking warnings for the audience, but it flouts a key journalistic safeguard. 

Are you willing to take that risk? What’s the danger if you don’t? Ask yourself, how do you want to get the news? Do you want it to be laborious and random, or easy and made to measure? No one has to consume news, and it’s our duty to make it attractive enough for the audience to want to consume it – but friction in its delivery is a big problem today.

Broadcaster cooperation is good for audiences

Imagine you’re doing the school run here in Belgium. You’ve got two brilliant national public broadcasters who cover the country and the world very well. But today you want to know about German politics – why? Because you’ve heard the far right AFD did quite well in elections at the weekend and that they’re popular with young people. Well, it doesn’t matter how much content you have, the Belgian media won’t have more expertise or content than their German counterparts. If you’re going to do the best job explaining the story, you’re going to need content from ARD and ZDF. And that’s the same for every broadcaster, large or small, you always need more content – and cooperation is the key.

So, second editorial red line: not only will no one check the story before it’s delivered, but it’s going to be based on another organization’s content, over which you have no control. We know collaboration is the only answer to winning this information war – we can’t do this alone. So are we ready to trust each other?

In fact, many EBU Members are already proving that they are. They’re publishing each other’s content on their websites and they’ve been exchanging video news for more than 60 years. They all use news agencies, and this next step is not that different. 

How far should this cooperation extend?

But hang on, you say, this is starting to sound risky. We need lawyers’ help to navigate the minefields that are copyright and data protection. What happens when AI makes a mistake, or when the source material was wrong? Because no one’s infallible, after all.

But do we agree to support each other? And how far will that solidarity extend? We need to protect ourselves, of course, but we can also facilitate the ambition to reach audiences with trusted journalism.

Lawyers can help us find the way forward. We need their creativity and sharp legal minds to help us make this happen for our audiences.

The question is, how do we make it happen? We’re not car manufacturers; we don’t control the most used online platforms or technical hardware. How do we operate in a marketplace that’s stacked against us and where we are not the biggest media players.

I know money is a thorny issue, and for public service media ‘commercial activity’ can feel counterintuitive. But now I’m going to use ‘commercial’ and ‘news’ in the same sentence. 

Is it ever okay for PSM to think of news commercially?

For many here, revenue generation in relation to news content is a hard red line. But we also know that giving it away for others to profit from isn’t right, either. So, we need a solution.

There are numerous hurdles to getting your news content to the audience in this new world. And companies are willing to pay for it – as they should – because news is expensive to make and  has a value. 

Let’s go back to cars. The carmaker sees a commercial advantage to delivering personalized, trusted public service news in its vehicles. As a driver, you also want to be able to get the news this way. As a public service media executive, you want to reach as many car users as possible.

Are we going to let our red lines on commercialization, particularly around news content, stand between us and new ways of reaching audiences? Or should we start looking at the problem differently? 

The world has changed – let's not get left behind

The world has changed, and the rules should probably change in step. The red lines which for a century and more have protected the public and our integrity are starting to look like red tape. They’re entangling and even strangling us.

How we redraw our red lines is up to us. But we have always, and must always, put our audiences first. What do they want and need? How can we best serve them? Our editorial values don’t change, but perhaps how we implement them should. Saying that human oversight of the final product is the only way to protect our journalism has served us for a century, but it’s no longer credible in 2026. We have relied on each other’s journalism for decades, and now we need to lean harder into that collaboration.

Laws are there to protect us, but we need to make sure they’re not merely stifling us. Let’s learn from big tech, who are always several steps ahead of legislation. Let’s explore every avenue to achieve our mission and ambitions in the public interest. 

And in a world where journalism’s business model has been detonated, we must rethink our approach to how we collaborate with a commercial world. It is a unique privilege to spend public money in the public interest, and we must consider all options to ensure we continue to serve all audiences with the trusted news they deserve. 

It's time to rethink 

One final thought to wrap this up. 

The story of public service media is one of groundbreaking innovation, and it’s time to reinvent ourselves once again. We might be more than 100 years old, and we may face existential threats, but we’re creative, and we can evolve. 

And with public trust on our side, we must leave nothing – starting with the red lines – unchallenged. 

Because to survive and thrive in this new world, the news industry doesn’t just need to adapt – it needs to undergo a full-scale revolution.