INFOCIVICA CONFERENCE

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SOME REMARKS ON THE PUBLIC SERVICE MEDIA REFORM
THE CENTRAL AND EAST-EUROPEAN 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

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INTRODUCTION

• 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 Medias phases of development
  introduction, growth, maturity and decline
  marked by different length and intensity than in
  other European countries or regions

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THREE LIMITATIONS

• 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

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RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

• 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

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RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

• 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

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• RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
• 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

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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

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Does it make sense to talk about a European
public service broadcasting?

• 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

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What would it mean for today's national public
service broadcasters to set up a European, or
pan-European public service broadcaster?

• 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)

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REPORTING EUROPE MORE?

• there is certainly need to offer more targeted
  and focused options
• a new generation of Europeans, children raised in
  multicultural environments, migration patterns
• stable national structures of settlement have
  changed with intra-European mobility and EU
  enlargement

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Is it still correct to maintain the peculiarity
of a mixed public-private system that
historically characterised the old continent on a
national level? Do we need the public service at
all?

• 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

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NEW TASKS

• to adapt old principles to new circumstances
• 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

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THANK YOU!

• beatakl_at_hotmail.com