week 8 (lecture 7) public media

This week was about the public media, whose mission is to 'serve or engage a public'. One thing that struck me this week was the idea that public media may be for profit as long as its ultimate goal is to serve the public (so any profit they make usually gets put back into making more documentaries, quality news). My interaction with public media in my lifetime has honestly been rather minimal (except for watching ABC cartoons in the afternoon as a kid). However, throughout this course I have started to respect and even enjoy stations such as the ABC and SBS and their productions. My favourite radio station is now Triple J, especially their science questions section.

Anyway, public media should have public value. We were given the BBC definition in the lecture, which states that it "should embed a public service ethos, have value for licence fee money, weigh public value against market impact, and have public consultation", or in other words, serve the public and keep society involved in the production of media. In serving the public it needs to be accessible to everyone geographically, in terms of being appealing and providing for minorities (whether it be ethnic or religious needs), and it cannot be biased towards a certain idea (politically, religiously, racially etc). My favourite however though is the idea that public media should liberate rather than restrict broadcasters, because the only people they have to answer to is the public. I feel as if though the public media suffers because of this: they can't be biased politically, however they rely on government funding to survive, so no wonder they find money difficult to come about.

Bruce then talked about the functions of public media, which include 'nation building' (things such as Anzac Day broadcasting), talking about our national heritage, reflecting our national identity and keeping up with the 'national conversations' so things such as sport that the country is talking about etc. Because they are not their purely for entertainment or profit value, they do miss out on a lot of audiences, and I think if people were more aware of the difference between commercial and public media they would respect public media a bit more and get involved.

Bruce explained that channels such as the ABC are trying to get 'groovy' - they are trying to make themselves relevant in today's society by producing quality media, engaging with the democratic process and being independent of any outside influences. Again these goals are tricky when they are funded by the government, however they need to keep in mind that they aren't owned by the government, but rather by the people (society, us).

This was a good lecture that really made me think about the role of public media, and supporting them a bit more in producing media that is free from pressures put on them by a company that owns them.