Week 7: Public Media

"The difference between commercial broadcasting and public broadcasting is the difference between consumers and citizens" – Nigel Milan    

After my rant about commercial media, it's nice to sit down and write about something I like and support: public media. Unlike commercial media, public media's main mission is to serve or engage the community. Public media may be used to generate a profit so long as it's ultimate purpose is to serve the public and not to turn a profit. 

Also, an important thing to remember is that public media is in support of public and democratic processes. So even though, in my opinion, it has great news and I'm a supporter of democracy, outside news sources should still be investigated to compare, just incase there is too much governmental influence.

In Australia the major players (but not all) in public media are ABC and SBS. Their four main functions are:

1. Nation building
2. National heritage
3. National identity
4. National conversations

Many people hesitate to engage in public media because they think it's too serious or 'boring'. With such a movement towards news as entertainment (such as The Project), many people see ABC news or SBS news as a yawn in comparison.

I personally don't subscribe to this. It feels good to be able to watch the news and not pick up on story biases and have to listen to personal opinions of the news anchor. That's just me, but I would encourage anyone interested in current affairs to slip some ABC news into their daily news diet.