Transcript 5. TRANSNATIONAL MEDIA SPACE

SOME REMARKS ON THE PUBLIC SERVICE
MEDIA REFORM: THE CENTRAL AND EASTEUROPEAN PERSPECTIVE
INFOCIVICA CONFERENCE
IS BUILDING AN EUROPEAN PUBLIC SERVICE POSSIBLE? AFTER
THE LISBON TREATY: PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS
Turin, 24.09. 2009
Beata Klimkiewicz
Institute of Journalism and Social Communication,
Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland
INTRODUCTION
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Does policy-making process concerning PSM reflect
democratic expectations?
Does it evolve towards a converged pan-European
model driven largely by a commercial logic, but still
effectively controlled by party politics rather than
forces of representative democracy?
Poland and CEE as a laboratory case
Public Service Media’s phases of development –
introduction, growth, maturity and decline –
marked by different length and intensity than in
other European countries or regions
THREE LIMITATIONS
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Public Service Media (PSM) in Poland and Central
and Eastern Europe (CEE) born as a product of a
profound media system change starting in 1989
‘new’ PSM preserved institutional continuity of
former state media
despite availability of other options, dual system
was transposed from West European media
landscape and policy tradition
the starting point of PSM institutional birth in
Poland and other Central European countries
overlapped with enhanced critique and PSM crisis
in the Western part of Europe
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
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REGULATORY
new regulatory bodies have emerged across the
region
the establishment of the Office for Electronic
Communication in Poland in 2005 advertised as a
super-regulatory ‘make-up’
‘Old’ distinctions between traditional media sectors
still reproduced through distinct policy mechanisms
implemented by ‘old’ and ‘new’ regulators
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
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FINANCING
 financing of PSM solely from licence fees appeared
unaffordable in Poland
 during the last ten years, licence fee revenue has
oscillated around 30% in total revenues
 the Act on Public Tasks in the Area of Audiovisual
Services (2009)
 public service tasks will be financed from the state
budget
 state subsidies for PSM will have to be negotiated
each year, which can result in a political bargaining
over the budget allocations at the expense of
editorial independence
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
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PUBLIC SERVICE PROVISION
implementation of public service mission
increasingly criticised across the region
high-quality programming profile abandoned at the
expense of high market shares
2009 Draft Act proposed ‘institutional’ division for
the public service provision: also commercial and
private broadcasters can receive public funds to
produce public service programming
public service media framed and seen
- less as institutions and quite homogenous centres
of a media system
- and more as services and applications available in
fragmented communication networks
a new discoursive space where
justification of a centralised institution
seems more difficult
Does it make sense to talk about a European
public service broadcasting?
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we should stop to talk about broadcasting exclusively
move from a traditional model of television toward a
network structure of various media businesses and
services including internet TV, news portal, social
web services, digital platform
a formerly centralized institution modified into a
whole net of interlinked services: the center of
gravity located not in the institutional elements of
the system, but rather relations and connectiveness
between different service areas
What would it mean for today's national public service
broadcasters to set up a European, or pan-European
public service broadcaster?
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a failure to create transnational pan-European public service
TV is largely embedded in cultural, linguistic differences in
Europe (Chalaby, 2002)
the view of nations as old, deeply integrated, and integrated
through communications between their members, has been
dominant (Bourdon, 2007)
the use of television is very much affected by formation of
geolinguistic regions, not defined by geographic or political
proximity, but by a community of language and culture
(Sinclair, 2000; Amezaga Albizu , 2008)
REPORTING EUROPE MORE?
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there is certainly need to offer more targeted and
focused options
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a new generation of Europeans, children raised in
multicultural environments, migration patterns
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stable national structures of settlement have
changed with intra-European mobility and EU
enlargement
Is it still correct to maintain the peculiarity of a mixed publicprivate system that historically characterised the old
continent on a national level?
Do we need the public service at all?
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new technological conditions pose new risks: media users
suffer from information overload and the loss of ‘traditional’
information filters
there is often no way to differentiate quality information
Internet content produces levels of audience concentration
greater than those in traditional media
although there is a great potential in diversity of new online
services, this potential has not been fully used by users
NEW TASKS
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to adapt old principles to new circumstances
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a system of mandated links to quality content and
opposing viewpoints so as to create ‘deliberative
domains’
to strengthen media user and equip him/her with
technological facilities and media literacy skills in
order to better use the potential of online and digital
services
alternative routes toward richer empirical and
normative understanding of PSM, both in terms of
institutions and services offered across national or
pan-European political and cultural space
THANK YOU!
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