Our media

Recently I have found myself becoming an avid supporter of public rather than commercial media. Constant advertising and bias arguments are becoming more obvious and increasingly frustrating. You know what they say, once you give commercials the hack, you never go back (well, they should say that).

So what is public media? Supposedly it’s a service to the nation. By definition it is government funded, supportive of the democratic process and non-commercial (non-bias). Its audience and focus (the public) are what drive its existence; therefore public media must succumb to the expectations of general public. These evidently include being widely accessible, informative, entertaining, independent, relevant, educational and having a universality of appeal. Public media must participate in society and engage communities in their own, and surrounding, arts and culture. Unlike commercial media, which faces such challenges as profit and pay walls, public media is concerned with funding, being politically independent, and allegations of bias and agenda. There is however a commercial side to public media. ABC shops and The World Game Shop (SBS) are outlets of public media organisations and generate a form of profit which just like commercial organisations must be returned to investors. However, in the case of public media, the investors are us, the public, so the profit generated is invested back into the media outlet and therefore continues to serve and engage the public.

Public media is our media.

In lecture 7, Dr Bruce Redman explained that the style of public media is typically characterised as serious, broadsheet (associated with ‘real’ journalism), focused on importance over interest and proofed and factual rather than quick and unconsidered.
However a social stigma concerning public media deems it incongruous within ‘popular’ society. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is one example of un-popularised public media which, having been dubbed ‘Aunty ABC’, can be seen as boring, elitist, poorly presented, out of touch and thus of limited interest. Personally speaking I completely disagree.

Public media is my main outlet for trustworthy updates on the democratic process. Finding difficulty in gaining interest in politics, shows like Q&A (ABC) and Insight (SBS) are effective ways of drawing my attention and concerns to significant incidents in Australian politics and society. While I still enjoy programs on commercial television and sometimes radio, I am a devoted Triple J (ABC) listener and enjoy a number of entertainment programs on ABC television. In fact Wednesday nights are now my favourite ‘TV nights’ with Adam Hills in Gordon St Tonight and Agony Uncles showing consecutively. The power and rise of public media is evident through Adam Hills’ recent Logie award, overcoming, without advertising, a vast number of nominees in a commercial field.

We need public media as our defence against complete dictation by private enterprises. It provides society with a non-bias forum where people can express their opinions without fear of losing the advertising dollar. Public media is our way of keeping ‘the bastards honest’.