ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a reevaluation of the Finnish radical experiment in broadcasting in the late 1960s known as informational broadcasting, focusing on the relationship between the key ideas of informational broadcasting and critical research in mass communication. In the history of Finnish broadcasting, the period of the late 1960s represents a unique combination of critical research and policy. As such, it offers a useful point of reflection when considering the development of critical research in mass communication, the basis for the first two questions we were asked to address here. For today's critics and reformers, its failure is a good reminder of the problems implied in the rational humanism of the critical tradition. This is why informational broadcasting, even through its failure, can teach an important lesson, not only for broadcasters, but also for critical scholars of communication.
