Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 1–21 © 2015 AEJMC Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1077699015610066 jmcq.sagepub.com Article Broadcasting Regulation and the Public Interest: Independent Versus Governmental Agencies Avshalom Ginosar 1,2 and Or Krispil 3 Abstract This study addresses the potential connection between media regulation and public interests. While investigating two Israeli media regulatory authorities, the study’s findings indicate that there is a difference between an Independent Regulatory Agency (IRA) and a governmental agency regarding the place of public interests and that both institutional and substantive consideration affect the extent to which public interests are the core of media regulatory policy. The study’s design and findings enhance the trend of bringing back the public interest theory to the center of media regulatory agenda on the expense of the competitive theory, the private interest theory. Keywords public interest, regulation, media policy Media regulation has often been justified by the need to preserve and advance various public interests. However, in many cases, there is no consent about which public inter- ests should be protected by regulation, and to what extent state regulation should inter- vene in the media’s business and professional decisions to protect these interests (Livingstone & Lunt, 2012; Pickard, 2010; Van Cuilenburg & McQuail, 2003).The discussion about public interests may have different scopes according to the meaning given to the notion “media regulation.” When referring to this notion from a narrow 1 The Academic College of Yezreel Valley, Israel 2 Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA 3 University of Haifa, Israel Corresponding Author: Avshalom Ginosar, The Academic College of Yezreel Valley, D.N. Emeq Yezreel, Emeq Yezreel, 3900000, Israel. Email: avshalomg@yvc.ac.il 610066JMQ XX X 10.1177/1077699015610066Journalism & Mass Communication QuarterlyJournalism & Mass Communication Quarterly research-article 2015 at University of Haifa Library on December 3, 2015 jmq.sagepub.com Downloaded from