Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture - Volume 11, Issue 2, 2020

Civic advocacy for public service media (PSM) is rather rare. Switzerland, however, where civic associations play a vital role in politics and the economy, and where media policy activism is currently on the rise, offers ideal conditions for such advocacy. Combining document analysis and expert interviews with leading activists, this article investigates the aims, strategies and networks of seven associations dedicated to media policy activism. It also examines the connection between No Billag, a 2018 national referendum on abolishing the public broadcasting license fee, and the formation of new associations. Findings show that these associations are gatherings of media professionals and that PSM is not their main concern.

In today’s globally connected society, the transformation of state-administered broadcasters into public service broadcasters (PSB) in new democracies is part of international media development projects that seek to democratize media systems following the collapse of authoritarian ideologies in the 1990s. This article traces the ‘what, who, when and how’ of international media assistance, with particular focus on projects that sought to transform Indonesia’s state-run broadcasters into PSBs during the 2000s–2010s. Drawing on extensive library research and semi-structured interviews, this article demonstrates the role of international agencies in the promotion of public service media in post-authoritarian Indonesia. They have influenced civil societies, policy-makers and media elites and promoted a belief that an independent and public-owned media enable people to better participate in a mediated public sphere. In this manner, international agencies have influenced policy design as Indonesia has transformed its national state-owned broadcast channels from state institutions into public ones. However, this article also finds that global intervention has failed to influence the more specific elements of PSB policy and implementation. In Indonesia, global work has focused on national regulatory design, leaving implementation to local actors. Furthermore, Indonesia’s PSB policy is but ‘an imitative version’ of PSB policies in developed western countries, lacking a detailed guide for transforming the country’s state-channels into true PSBs.

For most Americans, public service media (PSM) are synonymous with National Public Radio for radio and audio and Public Broadcasting Service for television and video. However, these national services do not fully circumscribe the PSM sphere in the United States. US community media are non-commercial, locally controlled outlets that produce content intended for local audiences, most often focused on local concerns associated with housing, education, government and the arts. This study provides an overview of the present state of community media in the United States. It draws on a variety of sources, including data from the industry, and from the professional press, as well as a series of extensive informational interviews with community media leaders around the United States. The subjects include representatives from community radio and community television outlets that serve urban, suburban and rural markets. After compiling and analysing the quantitative and qualitative data, several key indicators emerge that help to describe the current state of community media in the United States and point towards challenges and opportunities ahead for the sector.

This article offers a historical critique of state-administered media in South Asia. Taking Bangladesh as a media epicentre, the article extrapolates the geopolitical consequences of the colonial era and postcolonial transformation in the South Asian region under which the modern state-administered media in Bangladesh continue to survive, albeit declining. Drawing from field interviews and documentary research, the article further highlights the historical struggles of the state-broadcasters, particularly Bangladesh Television, in providing public service to fragmented masses. The findings suggest that despite its failure to break free from colonial and authoritarian political misuse, state-broadcasting continues to matter for the public service to a limited extent, not because how pervasive its propaganda is but how well its programming serves the diverse publics despite persistent political mistreatment and growing market pressures. The findings are reflected with other contexts of South Asian state-broadcasting.

Over the last two decades, public media arrangements in many countries have been eroded by unsympathetic governments cutting subsidies/license fees or, in some cases, actively dismantling their institutional arrangements. The proliferation of online/mobile/interactive media has legitimated a view among some policy-makers and vested interests within the private media sector that public service provisions are an anachronism in the digital media ecology. In such a context, critical media scholars whose research is intended to not only inform the academic community but influence public policy face significant challenges. Drawing on the author’s own experience of praxis in the New Zealand media policy sector, the article presents three case studies: the campaign to save TVNZ7, the campaign to unfreeze Radio New Zealand’s funding and the Fairfax-NZME merger. These serve to highlight some of the practical and normative challenges for research praxis, particularly those encountered by scholars who engage with pro-public service media advocacy coalitions. In doing so, the analysis will identify several points of tension that arise when research praxis attempts to extend beyond describing the world to trying to influence the policies and practices being studied. These include questions of whether it is possible/desirable to sustain academic objectivity/neutrality in seeking to develop stakeholder relations or whether commitment to an ideological or politically partisan position is necessary or problematic. The complexities and compromises of seeking access to policy-makers as an ‘insider’ as opposed to neutral ‘outsider’ are also considered. The analysis concludes that there is no necessary contradiction between critical praxis and scholarly independence and, indeed, that praxis may serve to improve the quality of academic scholarship through stakeholder engagement.

This commentary outlines the impacts of new media technologies and changed global geopolitics on public service broadcasting (PSB); documents the core values of public broadcasting as a media system, noting its evolution to public service media (PSM); and provides an overview of the current threats to and erosion of independent public media worldwide. However, PSM remains the most trusted source for news and information and a call for better global advocacy for public media.

In this commentary, we discuss how five prominent media development organizations (BBC Media Action, Council of Europe, DWA, PMA and UNESCO) define public service broadcasting (PSB)/public service media (PSM) and how they envisage its role and functions in their recent projects and reports. In view of the increasing challenges of the current media landscape, international donors are looking at models to provide a path to independent media and journalism and several international organizations support projects and institutional arrangements they label PSB/PSM. However, given the fundamental questions that existing PSBs face, is PSB a meaningful tool for media development? And how do these various advocates for PSB/PSM understand the concept and why do they feel that it is worth supporting? We find that there seems to have been a shift, common to all five organizations, towards defining PSB/PSM in terms of public service ethos, and we explain why this should be seen as a welcome development.

With an international debate under way about how to resolve the financial and political crisis affecting independent media everywhere, can international efforts enhance the prospects for promoting the principles of public service media (PSM) in national contexts where they have never been applied? Informed by discussions that contributed to a CAMRI Policy Brief published in March 2020, recommending incremental, non-media-centric approaches to laying the groundwork for PSM in challenging environments, this article considers how internal and external interests mesh in underpinning mechanisms to foster PSM values. It shows how regional and international mechanisms, including for example the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 16, along with proposals for an International Fund for Public Interest Media and Social Media Councils, rely for their credibility and effectiveness on national institutions and national representatives working with them towards the principles that underlie PSM.