| Summary: |
After many Western societies began to deregulate their media industries
in the 1980s and 1990s, the prominence of public broadcasting
organizations was progressively diminished while, at the same
time, the fiscal strength of these organizations was – and continues
to be – severely undermined. Under neoliberalism, attention was
redirected to commercialization and to the appearance of competition,
diversity, and plurality, to the extent that it became possible to
interpret developments such as the minimally regulated proliferation
of radio broadcasting licences and the multiplication of specialty
television channels as a new movement in the direction of
“media pluralism†(Cushion 2012b). Together with the accelerated
expansion of the internet and its increasing availability through a
diverse number of digital platforms (such as laptops, smartphones,
and tablets), the resultant media environment of the twenty-first
century is readily celebrated by many as “a richer and more globally
diverse public sphere†(Cushion 2012b: 1; see, for example, McNair
2006). With regard to journalism in particular, Fuller (2010) is led
to proclaim a virtual “information explosion†whereby news is seemingly
available from a multitude of richly diverse sources as well as
more easily and more speedily obtained at any time of day or night
and from any conceivable geographic location.
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