Should public broadcasters change their role — away from content production?
TL;DR
- Currently in Germany, but before prominently in Austria and Switzerland, plus other countries, the funding of public broadcasting is questioned
- Trust in media is eroding all over, and public broadcasting outlets are not exempt from this trend
- A proposed solution foresees a change in role of public broadcasters, reducing their content production efforts, while increasing their content curation efforts
(this article, upon request, also appeared in DE on Publikum)
Relative to the population, Germany currently has the most expensive public broadcasting organization (EUR 8 bn/y). Main public broadcasting outlets are ARD, ZDF, Deutschlandradio, Deutsche Welle, and further regional organizations (BR, SWR, NDR, etc.). These days, quite some political upheaval has been created, due to one regional parliament opposing the increase of the monthly fee, the “Rundfunkbeitrag”, by 86 cents. Up to now, every German household pays EUR 17.50 per month.
While the plates are currently hot in Germany, the questioning of funding amounts and methods of public broadcasting is not new in the greater region. Similar debates were held in Austria and Switzerland over the last years. In Switzerland, there was a vote (of course) in 2018, whether to straight up cancel the funding of public broadcasting. This vote was a clear example of the dire trend, to see the world in black and white, all or nothing. I have outlined in another article, why this is not the case. Nonetheless, such radical propositions have gained in popularity, as the broad political climate has grown more populistic. Thereby many seem to forget the word “reform”. The 2018 vote in Switzerland ended with a 71,6% victory for those in favor of keeping current funding practices of public broadcasting.
The question is not, whether we need public broadcasting organizations. They represent an essential part of the media landscapes and fulfill important, mandated tasks. To leave the field entirely to the private sector would not lead to better outcomes. Media & news as part of an essential infrastructure also fall into the public domain. The state should make sure that all citizens have access to news and media — and that all relevant topics are covered.
A purely private media sector would likely lead to many topics not being covered, and most certainly lead to many citizens being priced-out of quality media. As the media sector is realizing that the ad-revenue heavy business model is not ideal for most (and not crisis resistant, as 2020 showed), paywalls are getting tighter. How many subscriptions do you have? How many can you afford? How many can “the man on the street” afford? Apart from the trust & coverage topics, providing access to quality news is an essential part of public broadcasting.
Public broadcasters are essential. What’s the problem then?
This post is not about the current political upheaval in Germany, rather it’s about the afore mentioned word “reform”. Reform in the mandate and tasks of public broadcasters — not reform of funding amounts or methods, this would be a topic to address in another post. Such a reform would certainly have to tackle the fact of continued erosion of trust in media, which can be observed globally. The attitude towards the news and media industry is in many places not very favorable.
Neither public broadcasters, nor the mentioned DACH countries are exempt from this trend. The below graphic illustrates the erosion of trust towards the BBC (if you have similar figures for DACH based public broadcasters, let me know!). Before you skip over the graphic too fast, hold on to the fact that the change indicated happened over only two years. What level of trust is to be expected in 2022?
The German public broadcasters get their mandate through the “Rundfunkstaatsvertrag”, which mandates, among other things, that:
In fulfilling their mandate, the public broadcasters must take into account the principles of objectivity and impartiality of reporting, diversity of opinion and the balance of their offers.
While about 50% of the German public broadcasting funds go towards content production, the excerpt above does not necessitate that public broadcasters produce content themselves. So, what if they would produce less and curate more?
Hear me out.
On most topics, there is a variety of sources providing coverage (news articles, blogs, podcasts, and so on). What if the public broadcasters would reduce their own content production efforts and focus more on providing a well curated overview of the other existing coverage? Curating in that sense would also include fact checking of sources — and paying for content. Public broadcasters should continue to provide content for free, hence they would have to buy it from the private outlets, from which they take content into curation. This way a share of the public broadcasting budget would go further into the private sector. Thereby helping to ensure a diverse ecosystem of quality media.
Why would anyone trust the curation efforts of a public broadcaster, if they don’t trust it’s content?
Good question. To some extent, there is data on that. Exposure to different perspectives on a same topic not only helps to counter confirmation bias, it also fosters media literacy. To help with the trust issue, the curation process would further have to be as transparent as possible.
Note that “Reduced content production” does not mean “no” content production. Especially the public broadcasters of the mentioned DACH countries produce some brilliant news content, that few would want to miss. But what if content production was more focused — on news and information, and less on entertainment? Most of the TV based entertainment formats are very expensive to produce, only very few can be turned into a profitable export (such as the “Tatort” series in DE).
The technology to automatically provide different perspectives on all sorts of topics, from verified sources is already here today. Many news aggregators try to go in that direction, while however, in most cases carelessly feeding the user’s hunger for confirmation of own opinions (confirmation bias). We try to go a different way at Varia, through explicitly highlighting and exposing perspective differences.
Apart from aggregators, any news publisher could go the way to provide content from different sources on their site. This immediately brings along the ad & subscription revenue sharing question, which must be solved, otherwise a click on a linked, other publisher’s article would be a click away from revenue. While this is not straight forward, it is solvable. Even models similar to the code-sharing agreements of airline alliances are thinkable. I have talked to several publishing executives about this. Think of a Star Alliance for media, where content, user data and revenues could be shared. The user data part of this utopia is already partially implemented in Switzerland.
You know, who would not face any of the just mentioned complications? Where this idea could not be an utopia, but a mandate? Exactly, at public broadcasters. Using public broadcasting money to fund independent, fact checked quality media, and assuring broad, impartial and diverse news access to all citizens does not sound bad to my ears. But who knows, I am a drummer, I might be half-deaf anyhow.
As always, happy to hear other opinions on this!
A really great overview of the broader challanges that public broadcasters are faced with, has been put together by Konrad Weber (former head of Digital Strategy SRF Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen) & a selection of renown journalists, click here, to read more (in DE).
This article was researched and written using Varia Research
Sources:
Reuters Digital News Report 2020
https://www.digitalnewsreport.org/
Where the 8bn in DE go to
https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/medien/rundfunkbeitrag-wofuer-ard-zdf-und-deutschlandradio-geld-ausgeben-17091678.html?xing_share=news
Digital nudging to counter confirmation bias (study)
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fdata.2019.00011/full
Rundfunkstaatsvertrag (DE mandate towards the public broadcasters)
https://www.ard.de/home/Rundfunkstaatsvertrag/538802/index.html
