Public service broadcasting - a dead horse?

Public service broadcasting in fragile states: are we flogging a dead horse?  - contributed by James Deane

Executives from around 80 public service broadcasters gather in Montreal, Canada for two connected meetings. While these meetings focus on a predictable set of challenges – how to engage millennials and adapt to a transformed digital landscape – on the agenda of the first, the Public Media Alliance Global Conference, is: “why public media matters in a fragile world”. It’s an issue we’ve been banging on about quite a bit recently and think it’s important for development types, not just media execs.

Last October, we published Public service media in divided societies: Relic or renaissance?, which argues that in many fragile and divided societies, media landscapes were becoming increasingly co-opted and polarised, often along factional lines. In another, After the Arab Uprisings: the prospects for a media that serves the public, we particularly explored this trend in the post-‘Arab Spring’ countries. Both reports stressed that media freedom remained vital but that it was under increasing threat. But they also argued that the potential of media to enable debate across divides in society seemed to be shrinking even though it is increasingly important. Both support the conclusion that independent public service media seems ever more relevant to these challenges.

Reforming state broadcasters is a 21st century challenge

Some might understandably think we’re flogging a dead horse with our emphasis on what has traditionally been called public service broadcasting. This is not only because they might consider the whole concept an outdated relic of an analogue past. It’s also because part of what we’ve been arguing (especially in the context of fragile states) is that we need to re-energise the debate around reforming and transforming state broadcasters, something some consider to be the illusory triumph of hope over experience.

We’d disagree and not just because we’re rooted in the BBC. We work with a whole range of media organisations, ranging from social media start-ups to community radio, and supporting the transformation of state broadcasters is a relatively small – though one of the most challenging – parts of what we do. Much of what we’ve learned working and researching in fragile states suggests that, while digital technologies are transformative and have created unprecedented democratic energy and opportunity, co-option sometimes leads to media environments fracturing along ethnic, religious or other lines. This can in turn affect social cohesion, conflict and extremism, identity formation and belonging, accountability, corruption and much else besides.

This fracturing of public spheres is complex and leads to both positive and negative impacts but the concept of media systems capable of: engaging everyone in society, acting independently and enabling dialogue across divides appears increasingly – rather than decreasingly – relevant in the 21st century ... continued

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