The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of a media environment that is able, in times of crisis, to effectively perform several functions: to ensure that the general public has access to high-quality information on the crisis and to stimulate public debate on how it is being managed; to facilitate communication between the authorities and the population; to put forward relevant, science-based analyses of the crisis situation and solutions for how we can emerge from it; to look critically at the action taken by the public authorities in response to the crisis and to alert the population to the possible dangers to be avoided; to help steer the population towards responsible behaviour; to combat disinformation and the manipulation of opinions; to develop and disseminate specific cultural and educational content; to help minimise isolation or make it more bearable and to safeguard family, interpersonal, professional and social relationships.
Collaboration between public authorities and the media is one of the keyways of dealing with and overcoming a crisis. It is important to look closely at what the media and decision-makers in different member States have done to further develop and intensify this collaboration, along with the obstacles to such collaboration, in order to identify good practices and to draw relevant lessons from the experience gained during the Covid-19 crisis that could be applied in other crisis contexts.