RH
2011-04-15 14:10:42 UTC
Why public service broadcasting (PSB) matters
We all know what comes from rampant and unrestrained commercial
activity: a worship of Mammon to the exclusion of everything except
the feeding of company directors’ and financiers egos and greed. In
broadcasting, unrestrained commerce equals a low grade, populist
cultural diet heavily polluted with advertising. Many supporters of
PSB think that is a case of ’nuff said’. Were it only that easy.
The fact that commercial broadcasters left to their own devices do
tend to go for the lowest common cultural denominator is not a
knockdown justification for PSB but an expression of opinion, a
projection of taste. That is so even in the areas where PSB would seem
to be most obviously valuable such as the provision of news and
current affairs programming. Sadly, there is no necessary reason why
such programmes made by PSB providers should be more or less biased
than those provided by commercial broadcasters. Indeed, it could be
plausibly argued that PSB political coverage is more naturally
susceptible to bias than that of commercial broadcasters because PSB
is ultimately funded from a single source, government, through direct
funding (the World Service), hypothecated charges (the BBC) or the
profits of quasi-commercial undertakings funded by state granted
revenues, whereas private broadcasters at least have a diversity of
vested interests to satisfy
Read more at
http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/04/15/why-public-service-broadcasting-psb-matters/
We all know what comes from rampant and unrestrained commercial
activity: a worship of Mammon to the exclusion of everything except
the feeding of company directors’ and financiers egos and greed. In
broadcasting, unrestrained commerce equals a low grade, populist
cultural diet heavily polluted with advertising. Many supporters of
PSB think that is a case of ’nuff said’. Were it only that easy.
The fact that commercial broadcasters left to their own devices do
tend to go for the lowest common cultural denominator is not a
knockdown justification for PSB but an expression of opinion, a
projection of taste. That is so even in the areas where PSB would seem
to be most obviously valuable such as the provision of news and
current affairs programming. Sadly, there is no necessary reason why
such programmes made by PSB providers should be more or less biased
than those provided by commercial broadcasters. Indeed, it could be
plausibly argued that PSB political coverage is more naturally
susceptible to bias than that of commercial broadcasters because PSB
is ultimately funded from a single source, government, through direct
funding (the World Service), hypothecated charges (the BBC) or the
profits of quasi-commercial undertakings funded by state granted
revenues, whereas private broadcasters at least have a diversity of
vested interests to satisfy
Read more at
http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/04/15/why-public-service-broadcasting-psb-matters/