Lecture 7: Public Media

Public media, public media. It will be disappointing to my tutor but growing up I was pretty much only surrounded by commercial media. I hardly even watched ABC kids shows like most of my peers. I feel this, though, was the result of having three older brothers who had solid control of the TV remote throughout my childhood…haha. I feel in the past 7 weeks I’ve been at uni I’ve learnt more about public service media than I knew in the whole 17 years before I came.

So, at the start of Lecture 7 we were told that the mission of public media is to serve or engage a public. It seems in my very narrow case that it hasn’t engaged me whatsoever but I do understand the service it provides in top quality news and offering a wider diversity of programming. I know that most students enrolled in journalism have aims of working at the ABC as it seems to be one of the most respected news outlets in the country and I feel slightly disappointed that I, as of yet, have never fully exposed myself to it.

I found the list of what public media should involve pretty interesting:

• Geographic universality
• Universality of appeal
• Special provision for minorities
• Relationship to sense of national identity and community
• Distanced from all vested interests
• Universality of payment
• Competition in good programming rather than competition for numbers
• Liberate rather than restrict

From what little exposure I’ve had to the two main channels in Australia (ABC and SBS) it seems they both live up to these ‘goals’. If I’m able to bring up another class’ discussion, we were talking about how successful both the ABC and SBS have been in tailoring their programming to include ALL Australians. The result of the discussion was that the SBS are leaps and bounds ahead for minority groups whilst ABC may have some issues in their schedule looked like it was ‘designed by middle aged men for middle-aged men’ (quoted in Inglis 2006, p.476). I think that was how the ABC had always come across to me as well but after watching it more often I don’t have any difficulty enjoying its content.

I’ll move on now to the challenges that public media faces. Apparently it needs audiences. Well of course it does! After having a chat to a few of the girls that live with me, a tiny minority deliberately watch the public media channels. I think something that will be a big issue in the future for public media is the capturing of my generation as an audience. As depressing as this sounds, ABC’s and SBS’ current audience won’t be around forever and hopefully my generation will fill the gap they leave or the public sphere of the nation will be greatly disadvantaged.

Public media also have to deal with the constant scrutiny of whether or not they are politically independent. This has been a constant plague for the ABC as they have to juggle the fact that the government are the ones who fund them but their job is to be critical of them. As Dr Bruce said, it is a delicate balance when you are biting the hand that feeds you.

I followed up the point of the ABC being bias and out of all the snippets I read, this one caught my attention but mainly the few points raised at the end. ABC bias? 

It seemed pretty far-fetched to me at the beginning but then when the point that it is tax payer funded is brought up I can see how it is important that the journalists leave out their personal opinion and focus on fact. But who’s to say that this Mark Hendrickx is really telling the truth. It’s an interesting business!

Anyway I think that’ll be me done for Week 7’s lecture and now all my blogs are up to date for the assessment this Friday. J