What and Why Public Service Broadcasting?
Public service broadcasting is a unique concept. Although easy to understand, it is more often than not misunderstood, sometimes profoundly, sometimes even intentionally. Some languages do not even have a term fully corresponding to the English word “public”, and the closest translation appears to confer the notion of state/government/official. Where this is the case in a country which has had a tradition of state broadcasting, this linguistic barrier constitutes the first obstacle to a clear understanding of the real nature of public service broadcasting (which is anything but ‘state’, ‘government’ or ‘official’ broadcasting).
Public Service Broadcasting has an important role to play in providing access to and participation in public life. Especially in developing countries Public Service Broadcasting can be instrumental in promoting access to education and culture, developing knowledge and fostering interactions among citizens. For the majority of the worlds population, comprising inhabitants of huge rural areas and illiterate people, radio and television remain the most available and widespread ICT’s, with radio in the first place as primary communication medium.
UNESCO has been committed to supporting and promoting public broadcasting as well as preservation of its contents which serve the interests of people as citizens rather than as consumers by reaching all populations and specific groups and there by contributing to social inclusion and strengthening of civil society. UNESCO’s strategy “seeks to enhance the role of public broadcasting as a unique service providing universal access to information and knowledge through quality and diverse content reflecting the needs, concerns and expectations of the various target audiences.”
Neither commercial nor State-controlled, public broadcasting’s only raison d’etre is public service. It is the public’s broadcasting organization; it speaks to everyone as a citizen. Public broadcasters encourage access to and participation in public life. They develop knowledge, broaden horizons and enable people to better understand themselves by better understanding the world and others.
Public broadcasting is defined as the meeting place where all citizens are welcome and considered equals.it is and information and education tool, accessible to all and meant for all ,whatever their social or economic status. Its mandate is not restricted to information and culture development- public broadcasting must also appeal to the imagination, and entertain. But it does so with a concern for quality that distinguishes it from commercial broadcasting.
Because it is not subject to the dictates of profitability, public broadcasting must be daring, innovative, and take risks. And when it succeeds in developing outstanding genres or ideas, it can impose its high standards and set the tone for other broadcasters. For some such as British author Anthony Smith, writing about the British Broadcasting Cooperation seen by many as the cradle of public broadcasting- it is so important that it has “probably been the greatest of the instruments of social democracy of the century.”
From the 16–18 September 2002, a conference on Public Service Broadcasting in West Africa was held under the auspices of Article 19 and the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) in Accra, Ghana. Participants included heads of PSB organisations, heads of regulatory bodies, regional media organisations, media specialists and other regional stakeholders. The meeting deliberated on the need for reform of public service broadcasting in West Africa to reflect and sustain the new democratic dispensation and to allow popular participation in public affairs. The conference declaration included: recommendations on the status and mandate of PSB organisations, the independence of regulatory bodies, the principle of editorial independence, and PSB’s obligation to ensure that the public receive adequate, unbiased information, particularly, during elections.
The Asian Institute for Broadcast Development (AIBD) and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) organized a seminar on public service broadcasting in the Central Asian republics in February 2003, in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The seminar was held under the framework of PSB providing an important contribution to the development of democracy in Central Asia, with a means to building an informal civil society that recognizes pluralism and the importance of national identity and culture. The seminar participants considered PSB as a necessary, powerful, and effective means to support the educational and cultural potential of the people, as well as providing them with objective and reliable information. In this context, some of the participant recommendations reflected how the idea of public service broadcasting should be encouraged, publicized, and popularized among the people and the authorities, as an independent organ of broadcasting.
A Regional Workshop on “Public Service Broadcasting and the Civil Society in the Arab Region”, was organized by UNESCO in cooperation with IFJ, Article 19, the Arab States Broadcasting Union (ASBU) in Amman, Jordan, from 15–17 July, 2003, with the main objectives of sharing experiences and expertise, to promote the concept of public service broadcasting. This workshop also adopted a number of declarations and recommendations to encourage the development of PSBs “in all countries of the region as an important element of society and of citizen participation in the public life and sustainable democratic development.”
The importance of public broadcasting is far from self-evident. It took several decades to find its place alongside entirely commercial media and media controlled by the State. Today the unique contribution of public broadcasting is no longer in doubt and well-known examples, such as the BBC, are universally acclaimed: public service plays an irreplaceable role in providing citizens with information, education and entertainment free of commercial, State or political influences.
The challenge of the years to come, for public broadcasting, is to evolve and to adapt to the digital era the principles underlying its existence. Thus, the vast majority of public broadcasters already have a foothold in the world of specialty channels and Internet. What they need to do is to use these new technologies to improve and complement their public- service mission. They must proceed with caution, choosing sectors that follow logically from their raison d’etre. In Germany, for example, public stations have created two theme channels to complement their basic offering: a news and documentary channel and a children’s channel. These channels are fully consistent with a public-service mission.
