ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the public services aimed at the largest communities: German-speaking, French-speaking and Italian-speaking. It focuses on the channels that provided by public corporations to receive and handle complaints. The chapter shows that there is a long way to go in developing all the possibilities provided by the digital environment. Among the accountability mechanisms they make available, which range from press councils to codes of ethics, the media have also created channels to respond to viewers’ complaints and demands. A comparative study of the complaints handling options on the websites of the main Western European public service media (PSM) reveals several areas of divergence. An analysis of the mediation tools that PSM have provided to respond to the public is crucial at a time when the desire to involve the audience has become an inescapable objective for the media.
