The Opportunity
The Opportunity
With the business models for traditional media crumbling and the digital revolution disrupting the relationship between news organizations and communities, public broadcasting finds itself at a crossroads. “This is potentially a 1967 moment,” said Ernest J. Wilson III, chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and dean of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California. “Just as the Public Broadcasting Act moved us from educational television to public broadcasting, now we need to move to public service media.”
What is meant by public service media? John S. and James L. Knight Foundation vice president Eric Newton told the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Future of Media study that he defines news in the public interest as “the news people need to run their communities and their lives.” He would expand the definition to include not only the existing public broadcasting stations and national systems, but also an entirely new non-profit media landscape that includes entities such as Wikipedia, online magazines such as Consumer Reports and locally focused websites such as Texas Tribune, Voice of San Diego and the St. Louis Beacon. He argues that such sources should be included in the new public media ecology and receive federal funding.4
What is Public Service Media?Since the creation of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 1967, the term public media has been virtually synonymous with public broadcasting. Public media are commonly defined as non-commercial, publicly funded broadcast outlets with a mission to meet the civic and educational needs of the community or broader public. In practice, this has meant television and radio stations eligible for CPB funding. There is broad agreement that public media include:
With the explosion of new digital platforms and delivery mechanisms, this definition is beginning to expand. New conceptions of public service media place greater emphasis on the function or mission of the organization (e.g., to inform and engage people around shared issues and civic concerns) than the type of organization or its affiliations. Patricia Aufderheide of American University’s Center for Social Media has defined it this way: “Public media isn’t something you are. It’s something you do.”i In this expanded view, the primary aim is still serving the public, not making a profit. However, some people would broaden the definition of public media to include a range of publicly funded, not-for-profit, professional and nonprofessional, and potentially even commercial media. The following media have been suggested as part of an expanded definition of public media:ii
In this paper, the assumption is that with the current climate of scarce resources, the best way to proceed toward implementing the public media recommendation of the Knight Commission would be to allow public broadcasters to redefine themselves as public media centers that would include online, mobile and other digital communication. i Jeremy Egner, “Beyond Broadcast: Maps of public media plus maps as public media,” Current.org, June 23, 2008. Retrieved from http://www.current.org/web/web0811beyondbroadcast.shtml ii See remarks by Jan Schaeffer to the FCC Hearing, Preserving Public and Other Noncommercial Media in the Digital Age, April 30, 2010, (at http://www.j-lab.org/speeches/fcc_public_and_noncommercial_media_in_the_digital_era/); Henry Jenkins, “Where Citizens Gather: An Interview with The Future of Public Media Project’s Jessica Clark (Part I),” MediaShift IdeaLab, March 31, 2009, (at http://www.pbs.org/ idealab/2009/03/where-citizens-gather-an-interview-wh-the-future-of-public-media-projects-jessica-clark-part-one090.htm) |
Like other media, public broadcasting is profoundly impacted by the digital revolution. Competition is burgeoning. Public broadcasting’s best-known brands are being challenged by cable channels that offer children’s, educational, cultural and documentary programming and by websites that offer news and information instantly, globally, on demand.
News and information consumers are no longer content to wait for the morning newspaper or the evening newscast. They want to interact, to share, to comment and to provide original information. In many breaking news stories today, citizens are the first to provide eyewitness accounts and disseminate video and audio to a worldwide-networked audience.
Digital technology offers amazing opportunities for those who want to create and distribute content. Cost is no barrier. You do not have to own a printing press or a transmission tower. Universal broadband will expand opportunities exponentially for media makers and consumers. Technology can have a multiplier effect. Eric Newton said, “Technological breakthroughs allow one well-trained journalist to do things that used to require dozens if not hundreds of old-school, shoe-leather reporters…. For the first time having only two reporters at a public radio station need not be an impossible editorial challenge.”5
The new technology enables public media to transform from the one-to-many broadcast model to a distributed, networked model. Existing stations can transform into hubs that bring communities together, facilitate dialogue and curate vital information.
Laura Walker, president and CEO of New York Public Radio, wrote of her organization’s mission to make government and institutions accountable to the people they serve. “We’ll create new, far-reaching tools to reflect and reach diverse audiences and to establish a variety of communities across interests, heritage, neighborhood, and demographics,” she said. “We seek to create active, rather than passive, consumers of information, increased opportunities for participation by news consumers and marginalized communities, and more transparent, more effective, and more accountable civic and government agencies.”
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