From the words of WGBH Educational Foundation Conference, Public media is media whose mission is to serve or engage a public...It may be for profit, so long as its ultimate purpose is to serve the public and not turn a profit. In the Australian media landscape we're talking about ABC, SBS and their digital counterparts. Public media is vast across the world. There is lots in Europe, Africa and Canada. Internationally, public media consists of Channel 4, BBC, NHK, PBS, NPR, ARTE, RTHK. Public media is in support of a democratic society. According to the BBC: there is the idea of embedding a public service ethos, value for licence fee money, weighing public value against market impact and public consultation. A lot of us that actually enjoy the ABC are so grateful that we can watch some really good quality television made here in Australia without being interrupted by irritating advertisements.
One of the many advantages of public media is the lack of commercial advertising. It is for this reason that public media doesn't have to rely on the revenue from advertising which in turn gives it a great advantage over commercial media to report unbiased news and events. I will point out that it's impossible for them to be completely unbiased but compared with commercial media, there is a significant difference. This is mainly because public media are not obliged in any way to format their opinion or angle of a news story to support an advertising endorsement or partner.
In this day and age of social media, reality TV and money hungry companies, it's a relief to know you can switch over to the ABC or SBS and be able to watch an unbiased news broadcast (most of the time).
On a final note, I was recently introduced to a new show called 'A Moody Christmas' which debuted on the ABC this week. Check it out!
Lily xxx
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