Market-Led Reforms as Incentives for Media Change, Development and Diversification in the Baltic States

Abstract

The arguments in this article are structured around the normative ideal that the function of the news media is to support democratization, to ensure that different opinions are heard and to guarantee freedom of speech. First, the article assesses the relationship between the size of the media market and the official media policies in the three Baltic states. Second, it describes how liberal regulation, ongoing structural changes in the news market and a weak tradition of professional journalism have resulted in a proliferation of market-oriented logic in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Indeed, liberal regulation and existing media policies promote a diversity of media actors as well as content; still, in such a context, new skills are needed by consumers to critically assess available information and make informed choices — in general terms, to be media literate. Finally, this article discusses the challenges of the Baltic media as a new chance to address old problems of professional journalism.