Leidar et legitima s’allient pour lancer une offre conjointe visant à renforcer la légitimité des entreprises et des institutions (communiqué de presse)
octobre 2, 2025“Legitimacy is the foundation of media sustainability” (interview – HEC Montréal)
octobre 27, 2025Gilles Marchand -Former CEO of SRG (Swiss Broadcasting Corporation), Director of the Media & Philanthropy Initiative (IMP) at the University of Geneva- GCP, and founder of legitima, a strategic legitimacy advisory firm.
A bad wind is blowing across Europe, directed squarely at public service media.
It is strong, turbulent, and unsettling. It calls into question foundational values such as media independence, respect for difference, and openness to the world.
Put simply, it shakes the democratic structures that—perhaps too complacently—we believed were firmly established.
Contemporary liberal societies are undergoing deep and rapid transformations—technological, environmental, geopolitical, and cultural. These changes are interconnected, and their combined effects pose two critical challenges.
First: how can we maintain social cohesion among individuals who are less connected by geography or institutions than by emotions, identity, or digital communities?
Second: how can we preserve rational, deliberative, compromise-based approaches in an age of radical views that encourage conflict and even violence?
Democracy is not a given, nor is it a permanent state recognized by all and shielded from turbulent winds. It is not a finished product, but rather a project that must be constantly renewed. Without careful and continuous attention, democracy can grow weak, inconsistent, betray its own principles, or even pave the way for authoritarian regimes. Recent history proves it.
The state is both the product and the guarantor of democracy. And informed public debate lies at the heart of every democratic process.
Access to quality information is therefore essential, because there can be no free will without the insight that allows citizens to make truly informed choices.
Democratic discourse and individual freedoms require information that is accessible, verified, and well-documented—information that fosters understanding of history, science, the complexity of the world, political dynamics, events, facts, and figures. Ignorance is the antithesis of democracy.
Democracy and information form an inseparable pair.
Today, this link is under greater pressure than ever. The media landscape—both public and private—is experiencing profound cultural and structural upheaval.
Culturally, an increasing number of people no longer see journalism as a service with added value, but as a constant stream of raw emotions and rapid updates that should always be freely available.
Structurally, digitization, social media, and artificial intelligence are disrupting traditional media, undermining their authority, fragmenting their audiences, and dismantling their economic models.
Mass manipulation has never been easier or more powerful. Disinformation has never been so pervasive.
Amid the chaos of digital flows and the erosion of shared references, quality information is emerging as a defining pillar of 21st-century democracy.
The future of democracy depends on its ability to produce and disseminate credible, rigorous journalism that enables open, dynamic, and well-informed public debate.
The Swiss Laboratory
It is in this context that we see fundamental challenges to public service media mandates.
Switzerland has, in its own way, served as a laboratory. Its political system is rooted in strong federalism and direct democracy, which allow citizens, political parties, or organized movements to challenge laws through referendums or propose new ones through initiatives—with only a few tens of thousands of validated signatures required.
In 2018, the Swiss population voted on whether to continue funding—and therefore preserve—the public broadcasting service, SSR. The initiative was ultimately rejected by a wide margin (71%), but only after an intense campaign, dozens of public debates, and hundreds of impassioned articles.
Five years later, the debate has returned. A new initiative, from the same political circles, now seeks to halve SSR’s budget by 2026. When opponents fail to win on principle, they target funding. The tactic is familiar.
The Five-Front Model: A Framework for Understanding Legitimacy
These highly charged campaigns revealed the main arguments deployed against public service broadcasting.
Together with the EBU’s Compass Project, we analyzed similar trends across Europe and developed a basic model that identifies the five fronts from which pressure on public media arises.
This framework makes it possible to categorize attacks, understand their logic, and develop effective counter-narratives. It is offered to EBU members facing similar political pressures that threaten their missions and scope.
The first front is ideological.
It mainly involves political actors on the right who accuse public broadcasters—especially newsrooms and debate programs—of leaning too far to the left. They also criticize the focus on so-called woke themes such as gender and inclusion, or on environmental issues.
Some voices, even within supportive circles, promote a more traditional view of public broadcasting: cultural programming only, with no ventures into new formats, especially digital ones.
The criticism here is not only about airtime, but also about framing, tone, and perceived bias.
The second front is neoliberal, based on the idea of public-private subsidiarity.
According to this view, public service media should withdraw as soon as the private sector is able to deliver a similar service.
Public media are seen as unfair competition because of their mandatory public funding. The criticism is directed less at content than at the financing model.
This position has become more pronounced with the expansion of public broadcasters’ digital offerings and their commercial ventures, including advertising.
The third front is digital, reflecting a “pick-and-choose” consumer culture.
This group includes heavy users of media in all forms—broadcast, social media, streaming, gaming. Many younger people fall into this category.
They do not necessarily oppose public broadcasters or their content—often, they appreciate it. But they resent having to pay for content they don’t personally use. For them, it’s a matter of principle.
The fourth front concerns perceived inefficiency and waste.
Critics here, often from neoliberal or populist backgrounds, accuse public broadcasters of mismanagement, excessive salaries, and bloated organizational structures.
They compare public media unfavorably to private companies, ignoring the public service obligations they carry—such as territorial outreach, accessibility for people with disabilities, and content in minority languages.
These responsibilities are essential but rarely “economically efficient.”
The fifth front is radical—and opposes everything.
This is the most diffuse and difficult group to define. It includes anti-establishment, anti-authority, and conspiratorial movements that gained momentum after the COVID-19 pandemic and now thrive on social media.
They believe public broadcasters suppress their views and act as instruments of state control.
They argue that even extreme opinions deserve equal media treatment and see public media as part of a vast system of manipulation that benefits those in power.
Deep Dives and Building Credible Counter-Narratives
These five fronts manifest differently across national and regional contexts.
To respond effectively, we must conduct in-depth field studies, including interviews and political or media-market analyses, to tailor responses accordingly.
Above all, it is vital to anticipate these storms and prepare counter-narratives that resonate.
We can, for instance, respond to ideological attacks by clearly demonstrating editorial impartiality.
We can counter neoliberal arguments by reaffirming the notion of public interest.
To those who want an à-la-carte model of society, we can present solidarity—economic and social—as a core democratic value.
Where accusations of inefficiency arise, we can show accountability through data and public reporting.
And only transparency and independence can withstand the storm of conspiracy theories.
These counter-narratives must be supported by clear, reliable, and measurable indicators—and such indicators do exist.
Understanding Legitimacy as a Strategic Necessity
In the end, this is a question of legitimacy.
As defined by Suchman (1995), legitimacy is the perception that an organization’s actions are appropriate, acceptable, or desirable within a socially constructed system of norms, values, and beliefs.
Performance alone is no longer enough to ensure the survival of public or semi-public institutions.
Legitimacy is what enables them to endure—even in turbulent times.
Bend, if you must. But never break
Gilles Marchand
Article published in the collective book “UNDER ATTACK”
ORF public value international, 2025
