Lecture 7: Public Media

This week’s lecture covered public media, the opposite of what was explored last week in the commercial media lecture. I found Nigel Milan’s, former Managing Director of SBS, quote explaining the difference between commercial and public media to be exceptionally eloquent. “The difference between commercial broadcasting and public broadcasting is the difference between consumers and citizens.” Thus, the ultimate purpose of public media is a polar opposite of commercial media; it is to serve the public without making a profit. In Australia, the only public media outlets we have are SBS and the ABC, plus their digital TV and radio programs. Public media on an international scale includes organisations such as the BBC, Channel 4, PBS, NPR and arte.

The role of public media in a democratic society is to support the public and democratic process, and should have ‘public value.’ The BBC identifies ‘public values’ as embedding a ‘public service ethos’ in programs, personal value for the licence fee, weighting public value against market impact and public consultation. The Broadcasting Research Unit outlined in 1985 that public media should have a geographical universality, special provision for minorities, universality of appeal, distanced from all vested interested and universality of payment.

The key mechanism of public media is the news. It is often viewed as unbiased, or less biased that commercial news, as there is ‘no one paying the bills.’ 41% of Australians get their news from the ABC; this can be attributed to the fact that is the main source of lengthy interviews with politicians, national leaders and other prominent figures. It is often regarded as serious news as it places importance over interest. As independence producer Robert Richter put it, public media “is such a special vehicle for voices to be heard… [for] visions and viewpoints…ignored by commercial media.”

Prior to the lecture on public and commercial media, I had always preferred the news on either SBS or ABC. This is mainly due to my lack of interest in national and local affairs that commercial media outlets publicise. Important aspects of Australian news are reported by SBS and the ABC, but only if they are in fact important. My main problem with the news on commercial media channels is that it feels like I am watching a trivial exposé or witnessing the latest scare story, like ‘what your butcher actually puts in his meat’ or ‘can you really trust your neighbours’. While I understand, and appreciate, the importance of being informed, and not tuning out aspects of the news, as they often can be intimidating or threatening, I do not want to become afraid of my own shadow due to the tabloidization of commercial news programs.