Regaining the Initiative for Public Service Media
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Regaining the Initiative for Public Service Media Public service media is today challenged on every front. Publics and politicians see the commercial approach as the ‘normal’ way to organise broadcasting. There are strong pressures to downsize PSM organisations, to limit investment options, to restrict online and digital operations, to narrow remits to genres and for audiences that are not commercially attractive, and for increasingly intrusive assessment procedures. The principles no longer resonate very widely and there is growing criticism about a Regaining decline in distinctiveness. Even among traditional allies, support is flagging and skepticism is growing. In Europe the institution has not yet presented a coherent and convincing strategy attuned for relevance in the 21st century. PSM has lost or is in danger of losing the the Initiative for initiative. At the same time, there are promising efforts to develop PSM in regions and countries lacking a domestic history with PSB – to gain the initiative for building PSM. This 5th RIPE Reader incorporates a wider purview as an outgrowth of proceedings from the RIPE@2010 conference that convened in London 8-11 September to address Public Service Media the theme, Public Service Media After the Recession. The book is divided into four sections, reflecting the varied and distinctive narratives of PSB around the world. Gregory Ferrell Lowe & Jeanette Steemers (eds.) NORDICOM Nordic Information Centre for Media and Communication Research RIPE 2011 University of Gothenburg Jeanette Steemers (eds.) Gregory Ferrell Lowe & Box 713, SE 405 30 Göteborg, Sweden Telephone +46 31 786 00 00 (op.) Fax +46 31 786 46 55 E-mail: [email protected] www.nordicom.gu.se ISBN 978-91-86523-33-6 NORDICOM 6 3 3 3 2 5 6 8 1 9 NORDICOM 8 7 9 ISBN 978-91-86523-33-6 Regaining the Initiative for Public Service Media Regaining the Initiative for Public Service Media Gregory Ferrell Lowe & Jeanette Steemers (eds.) NORDICOM Regaining the Initiative for Public Service Media RIPE@2011 Gregory Ferrell Lowe & Jeanette Steemers (eds.) © Editorial matters and selections, the editors; articles, individual con- tributors; Nordicom 2012 ISBN 978-91-86523-33-6 Published by: Nordicom University of Gothenburg Box 713 SE 405 30 GÖTEBORG Sweden Cover by: Roger Palmqvist Cover photo by: Arja Lento Printed by: Ale Tryckteam AB, Bohus, Sweden, 2012 Contents Preface 7 Gregory Ferrell Lowe & Jeanette Steemers Regaining the Initiative for Public Service Media 9 I. POLICY CASE-MAKING IN THE HeartlanD OF PSB Robert G. Picard The Changing Nature of Political Case-Making for Public Service Broadcasters 27 Lars Nord Losing the Battle, Winning the War. Public Service Media Debate in Scandinavia 2000-2010 45 Peter Goodwin High Noon. The BBC Meets “The West’s Most Daring Government” 63 II. RESPONDING TO ENVironmental PRESSURES Karen Donders & Caroline Pauwels Ex Ante Tests. A Means to an End or the End for Public Service Media? 79 David A.L. Levy PSB Policymaking in Comparative Perspective. The BBC and France Télévisions 97 Peter Lunt, Sonia Livingstone & Benedetta Brevini Changing Regimes of Regulation. Implications For Public Service Broadcasting 113 III. TAKING THE InitiatiVE at THE FRONTIERS OF PSM Sally Broughton Micova Born into Crisis. Public Service Broadcasters in South East Europe 131 Yik Chan Chin & Matthew D. Johnson Public Cultural Service. New Paradigms of Broadcasting Policy and Reform in the People’s Republic of China 149 Julio Juárez-Gámiz & Gregory Ferrell Lowe Breaking the Mold with New Media. Making Way for a Public Service Provider in Mexico? 167 Naomi Sakr Public Service Initiatives in Arab Media Today 183 IV. PUBLIC SERVICE MEDIA IN PRACTICE Steven Barnett Broadcast Journalism and Impartiality in the Digital Age. Six Fallacies and a Counter-Factual 201 James Bennett & Paul Kerr A 360° Public Service Sector? The Role of Independent Production in the UK’s Public Service Broadcasting Landscape 219 Piet Bakker Expectations, Experiences & Exceptions. Promises and Realities of Participation on Websites 237 The Authors 253 Preface This is the fifth RIPE Reader published by the Nordic Information Centre for Media and Communication Research at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden [NORDICOM]. As always, the experience of working with Ulla Carlsson and her team has been productive and enjoyable. The RIPE community is grateful for the consistent quality and increasing importance this series has achieved since the first book was published in 2003. We thank the chapter contributors for their work and patience during the thirteen months this volume has been in production. Our editorial demands were often high, and sometimes complicated. Every author gave her or his best professional effort to address every request for further development. Together we have produced a tightly focused and cohesive result. The fifth Reader is the final result of the RIPE@2010 conference, which was about Public Service Media After the Recession. The title of this Reader reflects the focus of discourse during the conference, the importance of Regaining the Initiative for Public Service Media. This is also the most global Reader produced, reflecting the growing interest in public service media beyond its historic grounding in Western Europe. We want to thank the sponsors and hosts. The fifth conference was hosted by the Communication and Media Research Institute [CAMRI] at the University of Westminster and sponsored by the BBC together with the UK Office of Communications, Ofcom. The conference was excellent in every respect, intellectually, professional, socially and as a cultural experience. Our thanks, as well, to the staff of the Tate Modern for the open gallery tour and a delicious gala dinner. On behalf of the conference host and sponsors, we want to especially thank the Conference Planning Group [CPG] and RIPE Advisory Board [RAB], and their home institutions for the funding and other supports necessary to their involve- ment. In alphabetical order, the CPG members for the RIPE@2010 conference were Helen Normoyle for the BBC and James Thickett for Ofcom, Alessandro D’Arma and Peter Goodwin for the University of Westminster, Gunn Enli for 7 PREFACE the University of Oslo, Norway, Michael Huntsberger for Linfield College in the USA, Eva Pujadas for Pompeu Fabra University in Spain, Phillip Savage for McMaster University in Canada, and Alan G. Stavitsky for the George Turnbull Center at the University of Oregon in the USA. The CPG thanks the RAB for their help and support: Minna Aslama for Fordham University in the USA, Jo Bardoel for the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Anne Dunn for the University of Sydney in Australia, Taisto Hujanen for the University of Tampere in Finland, John Jackson for Concor- dia University in Canada, Per Jauert for the University of Aarhus in Denmark, Lucy Küng for the Jönköping International Business School in Sweden, Helena Sousa for the University of Minho in Portugal, and Hilde van den Bulck for the University of Antwerp in Belgium. Finally, we all want to especially thank Helen Cohen at the University of Westminster and Charlene Prempeh at the BBC for making everything happen – on time and in proper order. Thanks very much indeed for your good and effective work in herding this bunch of cats! This fifth RIPE Reader is funded by CAMRI at the University of Westminster and the Graduate Studies Programme in Media Management at the University of Tampere. We are pleased to announce the RIPE@2012 conference will take place in Sydney, Australia on 5-7 September. The sixth conference is sponsored by ABC Australia and will be hosted by the University of Sydney. November 2011 Gregory Ferrell Lowe Jeanette Steemers Media Management Programme CAMRI University of Tampere University of Westminster Finland London, UK 8 Regaining the Initiative for Public Service Media Gregory Ferrell Lowe & Jeanette Steemers Even in its heartland, the institution of public service broadcasting [PSB] is in trouble. That has long been the case in countries where the institution wasn’t strong to begin with. In the United States PSB only started after 1967 and has been under attack by the political right ever since (Stavitsky & Huntsberger 2010; Avery 2005; Engelman 1996). In central and eastern Europe where democracy is more recent, popular support has typically been weak and political meddling high because of historic association with state broadcasting (see Broughton- Micova in this volume; also Jakubowicz 2006a & 2004). That is also the case in parts of southern Europe where there was military dictatorship (Lowe & Nissen 2011). But today the problem is most striking in northwest Europe – the historic heartland of PSB. In Germany PSB corporations have been forced to withdraw online services and embrace a version of Britain’s public value test (Radoslav & Thomass 2010; Schultz 2008). The BBC has been radically challenged since the election of a Conservative-led coalition in 2010. Under the pretext of economic austerity and within a mere 48-hours, the Government imposed a licence fee freeze until 2017, along with additional responsibilities for funding the BBC World Service, S4C and BBC Monitoring. All of that was done without public consulta- tion or Parliamentary involvement (for analysis, see the chapters by Levy and by Goodwin). In Finland a challenge to the licence fee has been percolating since 2009 (Ala-Fossi & Hujanen 2010; Ala-Fossi forthcoming). In this volume, Lars Nord’s assessment of debate over public service media [PSM] in Denmark, Norway and Sweden would suggest some concerted effort by the commercial sector to hamper PSM development. Right across Europe the public sector in media is caught in ‘a perfect storm’. Although dark clouds are nothing new, the magnitude of this storm is stronger and more threatening. The 60+ experts who convened for the RIPE@2010 conference in London concluded that longer-term trends and pressures have converged to a remark- able degree in the context of economic recession.