Lecture Reflections: Lecture 7

Public Media

The forms, functions and ideals of public media, make it our ultimate public servant. It walks the line between being a government watch-dog and a public informant and keeps public interests best at heart.  

Over the years public media, namely the ABC, BBC, SBS, and PBS etc. have worked to serve their nations media needs.  In a news program form, it is serious news, considers importance over interest to be of higher value and is considered a trustworthy and validating source of news because it is checked, checked and re-checked.  It also covers other areas of media through social programs like cooking and travel shows and of course leaves room for entertainment that connects to levels of interest that commercial media are to conformist to reach out to. For example the types of comedy featured on ABC are far astray from an American style of humour. 

The most defining characteristic of public media compared to commercial media is of course the money and resources available to each form of media through government or licence funding, and advertising funding.  Although some public media channels have recently taken up advertising as a part of their funding, for example SBS and TVNZ, their core values are also what make them differ from commercial media.

Some Values and characteristics of Public media: 

• An embedded public service ethos.  
• Value for licence fee money (in countries when a television licence is required)
• Weighing public value against market impact
• Public consultation
• Universality of appeal (programs that cater for all tastes and interests)
• Special provision for minorities (for example SBS’s focus on multiculturalism)
• Special relationship to the sense of national identity and community
• Distanced from all vested interests (specifically political bias and endorsement from advertisers)
•  Programs competing for good programming rather than competing for numbers and ratings.

 

However these values are in a constant battle with the challenges that public media faces as they often risk contradiction or compromise to be able to survive. For example, what I consider two of the most important values stated above, to be distanced from all vested interests and to strive for good programming rather than good ratings, are core values that are challenged by commercialisation and funding.  For programs like the ABC who have not and will fight to not have to use advertising to sustain their programs, they are solely funded by the government. From a public point of view we idolise the ABC as a guard of truth and a protector of our public interest as they always keep a watchful eye on the government; as we learnt in our lecture “as long as the government doesn’t like the ABC, it means they are doing their job.”  Unfortunately for the ABC, the government does have a level of say as to how the funding they give to the ABC is allocated and how much that can get. The effect of a small budget at the ABC does limit how well their programs are made and how well they connect to the public. They are for the most part well put together in an informative sense but visual appeal is significantly different to commercial media with a budget that adds ‘sparkle’ to their programs.  This means that, for the ABC, the tightrope between serving the public and investigating there fund giver creates a type of media that has a margin of negative opinion; for example they are sometimes being criticised for being ‘boring’ and ‘out of touch’. 

Mark Scott says “the ABC is not accountable for profit but it is for quality”, a very effective rebuttal to the issues of getting ratings and turning a profit rather than serving their audience and the wider Australian public, the ABC did after all set out to be a “nation building project.” This foundation of the ABC and by extension public media in Australia directly correlates with the functions of public media. 

Some functions of Public Media:

• Nation building
• Connected to our national heritage
• Supports and highlights out national identity      
•  Enables national conversations

These functions differ greatly to the functions of commercial media that are centred on profit and ratings. Although the two forms of media differ greatly in orientation, they both need their varying demographics and audiences.  Public media can manage this issue and keep their audiences by continuing to be diligent in what they broadcast and who or what, if anything, it supports. Most importantly it must keep integrity in the public eye, public media must produce quality content that people want to watch, they must make themselves relevant with what they produce and essentially must engage with the democratic process and be vested in public interest. 

Although some research has shown that through programs that identify politically, through interviews and talkback for example, the ABC in particular seems to be fairly strongly left winged. However, as put by Jeremy Paxton, one can be a political person or have a political interest but is not motivated by a political party and can avoid any associated bias. The ABC drums into its news reporters that there must always be a level playing field where both sides of a story are shown and that ‘personal opinion is as taboo as product placement’.  Ultimately public media, in all its forms and functions, works to serves its central values that therefore serve the public values.