The BBC – in it’s current incarnation – sees itself as an asset to liberal democracy in a variety of ways.
Are 4iP working to re-articulate what public service media is for?
I do to – and given our many failings as a democracy (our centralisation, our unelected second-chamber, our politically independent civil service, the huge unchecked power of pressure groups and media-owners, etc), the BBC acts as a hugely important counterbalance.
My own hasty list of ways that it currently does this would include the following:
- Providing a balanced alternative to the biases of commercial media in news reporting and current affairs (acknowledging right-wing suspicions of metropolitan liberal bias here…)
- Acting as a British expression of the Cultural Exception (updated to a more politically fashionable role as the guardians of cultural diversity) and providing other counterbalances to market failure within the media – creating a shelter from the monopolistic content-production ecology that is dominated by US producers, etc
- Giving us an alternative to the bloody awful tedium of ad-driven TV (both the distortions to the schedules and the actual ads themselves) and providing a hugely efficient provider of value-for-money at the same time in return for the minor loss-of-liberty that arises out of a near-tax imposition
- Providing a counterbalance to the increasing fragmentation of the media to provide a shared national platform that can promote a sense of citizenship
Personally, I’ve bought most of these arguments for most of my adult life. Increasingly, though, the first one is starting to look like an impoverished objective for a variety of reasons.
Firstly, there’s the question of how far pluralism is preferable to neutrality. I’d make this case in more detail, but Mick did so a while ago on Slugger O’Toole.
Secondly, there’s the question of how far the relationship between political structures and the media is a single adversarial one. Sure, there’s a role for the media in holding the political establishment to account. But there is also the task of the ‘candid friend’ – helping innovators know what will work, broadening the adversarial fire away from just the elected political establishment and focussing some of it on its unelected rivals.
The media is extremely good at bringing the low-hanging fruit to the attention of the political class. A quick perusal of the spaces in which the public are invited to sound off shows that it is very easy to get at the public minorities (trans: The Silent Majority) who know exactly what they think and are passionate about their beliefs. But the tougher – but more important – task is how you can tap into the sentiments of the larger body of people with mild preferences. Twitter’s business model appears to be based upon the creation of a space where a wide range of easy sentiment is exhibited – and then monetising that data in one way or another by selling it to search engines.
Is there a role for a public service media in creating quick light conversations on a wide range of issues and then mining them – using sentiment analysis or – much less cleverly – simply flushing out routine conversations expressly for the purpose of listening to them? Getting conversations going is something that Mick at Slugger or Hugh at Harringay Online are very good at (but few others are quite as adept…)
Is this something that a public service broadcaster could do? Is it something that a commercial media organisation could ever be trusted to do? My preference is with the public service broadcaster.
Taking this one step further (and I apologise now for linking to more of my own posts) is it perhaps the role of public service media to destroy the monopoly that public sector communications staff have in describing their own services?
Is it possible that the future role for public service media is to be a trusted intermediary – a detached and independent ears and mouth that helps the state? Is this what the final destination of 4iP projects such as MyPolice and HelpMeInvestigate (among others) could be?
