We’ve heard for decades that public broadcasters ‘crowd out’ private media; why does this claim persist when the evidence says otherwise?

The claim persists mainly through repetition by private media operators (in particular publishers and other vested interests) serving as a convenient argument to limit public service media. It is almost like a fairy tale, no one has ever seen the witches, yet everyone is told they exist.

Yet the claim lacks empirical support: extensive research has failed to confirm the “crowding-out” hypothesis (see further background here). The narrative endures not because it is evidence-based, but because it aligns with national political and economic interests.

More broadly, scientific evidence is often deliberately ignored or contested in politics and public debate when it conflicts with powerful economic interests.

If public service media are not shrinking the market, what are they actually doing to it?

They are stabilising, strengthening, and even expanding the market. Research shows that stronger public service media increase overall demand for news, raise quality benchmarks, and build trust in journalism. This, in turn, leads audiences to consume more news, and to value it more, including a greater willingness to pay. The benefits extend across the entire market.

Public service media also act as a counter-cyclical force: when private actors cut back, especially in economic downturns, they continue to invest, helping to stabilise the system as a whole. At the same time, they generate positive spillovers by supporting production, partnerships, and innovation that private players can build on.

Importantly, they reinvest their resources domestically, unlike global platforms, thereby strengthening local journalism and national media ecosystems.

In short, rather than shrinking the market, public service media make it more resilient, more trusted, and ultimately larger.

Your article suggests that when public broadcasters invest more in news, private publishers actually benefit; how does that work in practice?

It works through both indirect and direct effects. Indirectly, public broadcasters raise trust in journalism and set quality benchmarks. This increases audiences’ overall willingness to consume and pay for news, boosting subscriptions, reach, and revenues for private publishers.

Importantly, these effects remain robust even when controlling for structural differences between media markets.

Directly, private actors benefit from commissions, co-productions, and partnerships linked to public service media, as well as from spillovers in skills, innovation, and content standards.

In practice, this means that higher public investment does not displace private activity, it expands the market and improves the conditions under which private publishers operate. The result is not weaker competition, but a stronger and more sustainable media ecosystem overall.

In concrete figures this means that a 100% increase in the supply of online news by public service media leads to a 28% increase in revenues, and a 100% increase in weekly reach results in a 43% increase in the reach of publishers’ products. This correlation has been confirmed at pan EU level (see here) but also in Lithuania or Finland.

So is the media market really a case where one player’s gain comes at another’s expense, or does the evidence suggest a more mutually beneficial dynamic?

The evidence clearly points to a mutually beneficial dynamic. Studies consistently fail to support the “crowding-out” claim and instead show positive spillovers from public to private media. For instance in Finland, an 1% increase in Yle's weekly news share of page views was associated with a 0.19% increase in traditional publishers' page views (O&O study based on FIAM data).

In contrast, within the platform economy, the primary beneficiaries are large global platforms, mainly based in the United States and China, which extract value from national markets. Unlike these players, public service media reinvest domestically, supporting local journalism and the wider ecosystem.

Overall, strong public service media reinforce, rather than weaken, the market as a whole.

If public broadcasters are not the problem, what is really driving the economic crisis in journalism today?

Public broadcasters are not the problem, the crisis is driven by digital disruption and platform dominance.

The traditional news model collapsed when advertising and classified ad media, once up to two-thirds of publishers’ revenue, moved online. That value did not go to public broadcasters, but to global tech platforms, which now dominate digital advertising and audience attention.

At the same time, publishers lost both readership and pricing power as consumption shifted online. In Finland for instance, a recent report tested what factors most strongly reduced the likelihood of individuals using traditional publishers' online news services. The answer was not Yle's presence. The dominant negative predictors were unwillingness to pay for news and disinterest in news; both of which reflect broader societal and economic trends, not PSM activity. The result is a structural revenue gap that high-quality journalism cannot fill through the market alone.

On the other hand, digital platforms increasingly benefit because they control key gateways to information, using algorithms to shape visibility, attention, and access. This lets them profit from both access (charging for reach) and user attention (targeted ads), capturing growing revenues once earned by journalism.

In short, the crisis is not caused by public service media, but by a fundamental shift in the economics of the digital marketplace, where value is extracted by global platforms rather than reinvested in journalism.

You describe public service media as ‘market shapers’, what does that mean in plain language?

The concept comes from the economist Mariana Mazzucato, who developed it originally in work for the BBC. It says that public institutions can actively shape the direction of a market, drive investment and innovation, set standards, and create demand that the market then responds to.

Public service media don’t “distort” competition, they raise the standards. By setting clear quality standards, building trust in journalism, created skills and formats that the commercial industry then builts on and sustaining demand for reliable news, they make audiences more willing to consume and pay for content across the board.

They also act as a stabiliser: when the market weakens, economically or politically, they keep investing, which helps prevent the entire system from shrinking.

Applied to public service media more broadly today, this means: rather than asking whether a public broadcaster is displacing a private one, we should ask what the information ecosystem as a whole looks like with or without strong public journalism. The evidence strongly suggests it looks better with it.

Why can public service media do things that purely commercial players or platforms cannot?

Public service media can do things commercial players (which must generate returns for shareholders) cannot because they are funded by the public and guided by a clear public remit. They are designed to be independent of both state control and commercial pressures, and are obliged to provide balanced, reliable information.

This gives them the freedom to invest in journalism, technology, and innovation even when returns are uncertain, and to ensure content remains widely accessible often at little or no cost, for example, through open-source approaches.

Because of this funding model, they can invest, editorially and technologically, in projects that may not generate immediate returns, or may never be commercially viable at all. In other words, they can take risks on behalf of society. This is becoming increasingly important in a context where countries like Germany, and Europe more broadly, are growing ever more dependent on technologies from the United States and China.

This gives them a crucial systemic role: they can offer a genuine alternative, and a necessary counterweight, to the dominant global platforms. In doing so, they help secure at least a minimum level of media and technological sovereignty for Europe.

Some policymakers still want to limit public service media online, what risks does that create for the wider media ecosystem?

In doing so, whether intentionally or not, they ultimately play into the hands of the large platforms from the United States and China, which have already been the primary beneficiaries of restrictions on public service media.

The economic trajectory of publishers over recent decades clearly demonstrates that limiting public service media has not helped them. This is consistent with the findings of the academic research mentioned earlier. A look at the United States, where public service media are comparatively weak, leads to the same conclusion: publishers there have lost their business model just as profoundly as in Germany and across Europe.

The evidence therefore points in the opposite direction of many current policy demands. If policymakers genuinely want to support private media and strengthen the overall media ecosystem, they must be reinforcing public service media and not weakening it.

At the same time, the window for effective action is closing fast. If current trends continue, whether unchecked or only lightly regulated, major platforms based in the US and China are likely to dominate national media markets within a few years. By then, the scope for meaningful political intervention may be severely limited.

Looking ahead, what would a healthy European media ecosystem look like; and what role should public service media play in building it?

A healthy European media ecosystem would be pluralistic, resilient, and trusted. It would combine strong public service media, a vibrant private sector, and fair digital conditions, ensuring that high-quality journalism is widely accessible, economically sustainable, and able to support democratic debate.

Public service media have a central role to play, but an evolving one. The proposition in our article, and in the broader body of research we engage with, is that the public service mandate should be extended, not just to cover content, but to encompass infrastructure. The concept of Digital Open Public Space (DOPS) developed for ZDF is a concrete proposal to this purpose. Public service media would act as a public-interest counterweight to dominant private platforms by expanding public-service broadcasting into digital infrastructure. Beyond content, broadcasters would provide open-source technologies that can be used by partners in media, science, education, and culture. This would foster collaboration, reduce dependence on global platforms, and embed public values like transparency and pluralism in the digital ecosystem. At the same time, it would support innovation, enable new media business models, and strengthen Europe’s media and technological sovereignty.

Beyond the market, their role is fundamentally societal. With a clear public remit and independence from both state and commercial control, they are entrusted to provide balanced, accessible information to all citizens. This is essential for social cohesion, informed public debate, and democratic resilience.

Looking ahead, the goal is not a public broadcaster that dominates the digital space, but one that helps create conditions in which democratic, fact-based public communication can thrive. The evidence reviewed in the O&O studies, across Finland, Lithuania, and seventeen other European countries, suggests that strong public service media make that goal more achievable, not less..