Government SHOULD hate Public Media

To be honest, I thought public media would not be as interesting, compared to other lectures. It was however, quite interesting especially how I could compared and contrast PM with the commercial media. Before studying journalism, I personally did not know anything about media which was why all the lectures were interesting. Through this course, I was able to distinguish the different media types and the reason why it is the media it is.

Lecture 7 was about Public media which was defined as ‘a media with a mission to serve and engage a public.’ The first evidence about this definition was that PM doesn’t earn profits, and if they do, it solely goes back into producing. The two well known public media in Australia are ABC and SBS. There are, however, many other international public media channels, such as, BBC, PBS, NHK and many more.

Public media compared to commercial media had positive and negative points, which are listed below.

Positive

w  It is more serious

w  It is broadsheet style

w  It broadcasts importance over interest

w  The information is considered not quick and unchecked.

Negative

w  It can be boring

w  Elitist

w  The information can be of limited interest

w  It is poorly presented

w  Out of touch

Public media is more serious and careful about what they produce which is evident through ‘Tweeter.’ It was stated in the lecture ABC was usually the last people to post any news on Tweeter due to the “checking process” before publishing any information to the public. This is unlike the commercial media, such as Brisbane times etc. to post with out and confirmation.

One thing that caught my attention the most was the fact that government should hate public media. Firstly, I thought governments would like the public media as it produces more reliable news and information. Secondly, the governments are the sources that fund such institutions, thus, I thought the government liking the public media would be a benefit. It was, however, stated that it is “good” that governments dislike public media. This was due to the fact that public media should sit above the government and be independent. So, what exactly is “independent” in public media? I believe the term independent in this sense is that being alone and away from the trend of the world and just solely “owned” by the public’s itself.     

Through this lecture the difference of commercial media and public media became clear. It wasn’t only the fact that one earns profit and one doesn’t (which is the most obvious difference) however, the difference in their broadcasting. To me, before the two lectures, all news and channel seemed exactly the same but now I can see the difference and the reason for this contrast. There are positives and negatives for both types of media, but public media is the last bastion of long form investigation journalism after all.