State Media Monitor in The Shift

A new tool to assess the editorial independence of 546 state-administered media companies in 151 countries found that nearly 80% of the world’s state media lack editorial independence.

The comparative study launched by the Center for Media, Data and Society, aims to go beyond the simplistic separation of state-controlled outlets and independent public service media since there exist a number of variations between these two contrasting models.

In order to better identify these differences, the authors created the State Media Matrix – a typology of state media that uses three key factors that affect the independence of state media:  funding, ownership/governance, and editorial autonomy.

Using these three features as a basis, the study then drew up a classification of seven state media models that are characterised by varying degrees of independence.

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