What's so Great About Public Service Broadcasting?

Reflections on what public service broadcasting is as a concept and what it can be

Hello Dear,

I wonder whether you have been reading the posts in this #NotJust Newsletter. It is my humble hope that I am able to provide some value and encourage and inspire you to think afresh about what I believe are issues of public good, which matter and which should matter.

Fine, so coming to today’s post…It’s about what we call public broadcasting, or what I would like to call as public service broadcasting (I prefer this latter name since it highlights the aspect of service; well, whether one should highlight service when one renders it is another question altogether. Let us examine the political economy of virtue and of matters such as virtue signalling in another post).

Incidentally, the previous post of One Doubt Please was or rather is also on public service broadcasting, specifically on India’s public broadcaster Akashvani. You can check out that post here.

Back to today…let me share with you some reflections on public service broadcasting, where I explored some key aspects that define the identity and values of a public service broadcaster. I seem to have penned down these reflections some time in February 2018.

[Given below is a piece of reflection I wrote, seemingly in February 2018]

My understanding of public service broadcasting

I think I do not quite understand it. Nevertheless, I believe it is a type of broadcasting which is a public good (concept in economics - a commodity or service that is provided without profit to all members of a society, either by the government or by a private individual or organization), provided by the state, with the sole and paramount motive of public interest, as a public service - primarily for the people of the state (nation in case of a country) in question.

A key question that arises here is: who is it that defines and determines what constitutes public interest? Let us start exploring this, disregarding the received wisdom that public broadcasting should be independent of the government.

After all, one may think: isn't the elected government a representation of the public interest? In a sense, yes, but only to some extent. It is a majority metric, as measured at a given point of time, intended for a certain period of time, based often on an incompletely represented population (since not everyone votes - and votes knowledgeably).

The government is hence elected out of an administrative need - because a large people cannot seem to directly govern themselves; and it is not quite a clear representation or encapsulation of public interest. It is at best an approximation.

Besides, democracy itself is founded on a smooth and fair transfer of power between governments, a precondition to which is the facilitation of a process by which people are given the power to decide their governors as freely and fairly as possible. This in turn demands that a mechanism exists which enables the people to question the government.

Also, every government is prone to act in its own interest - and compromise public interest.

Due to the above, the government is not the right agency to determine the public interest that drives the mission of a public broadcaster.

But then, what can be a higher standard? Who would adopt and live by this higher moral ground?

So far we have been talking about the executive arm of the state. Can the legislative be the answer to this?

But due to some of the same reasons mentioned above for the government, the legislature too is an imperfect arbiter of public interest for a public broadcaster.

Before looking at other options, it would be instructive to weigh the fundamental principles of other national public interest institutions such as the judiciary (the third estate)... it strikes me that the judiciary has the foundation of a specific discipline to establish their determination of public interest - namely, the law as a discipline, as well as the laws of the land, as embodied in the Constitution and other laws (so law and the law).

Now, would it be advisable to let the judiciary or a judicial institution to determine public interest for a public broadcaster? The next question will answer this one!

What about the fourth estate? Can the media be a wise option to determine public interest? In a sense, this may look like a circular question, since what we are asking is: can the media be the primary arbiter of what constitutes public interest for public media?

Well, for one, the very existence - real or aspirational - of public media (as a public good) as distinct from the general concept of media (which includes market-driven media too) rules out choosing media itself as the primary arbiter of the meaning of public interest for a public broadcaster.

This discussion leads us to the almost ineluctable conclusion that the public broadcaster has to find its source of moral code on its own, firmly in conjunction with the codified meaning of what it means to be a state. In other words, public media has to determine public interest by its own internal moral fabric, guided resolutely by the legal, economic, social and cultural elements that constitute the nation - which includes the Constitution, other laws, culture and other aspects of the lives of the people, and the founding code of the broadcaster itself.

Going by this, the public broadcaster is called upon to and has the potential to be a superior form of democratic representation, of the voice and interests of the people, than any of the four traditional arms of the state! The public broadcaster has a bigger potential role to play in democracy, than any of the other state institutions!

How come? Because this is the most dynamic body - thanks to the very nature of the process of communication. More than any other institution, the public media institution is called upon to represent and is capable of representing the public interest more accurately at more times.

This is possible because of the very nature of a public media institution - it is always on, always collecting voices of the people, and has the power to reflect those voices almost instantaneously in its practice - unlike a government or a legislature or a judiciary which by design is more rigid and less dynamic.

I think it is superior by design, in theory to any of the other arms of the state!

In conclusion: public service broadcasting is the closest possible approximation of direct real-time democracy! And that makes it a great cause to establish, to build, to defend - and arguably to live and die for.

[End of the piece of reflection I wrote, seemingly in February 2018]

I must submit that there are a lot many aspects on public service broadcasting which should concern us and which we should explore. Meanwhile, what do you think of the above reflections? Do feel free to share your thoughts. And if you find some value in this, please also consider subscribing to this #NotJust newsletter and spreading the word about the same. Thank you! - Dheep.