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PACIFIC ISLANDS REPORT Pacific Islands Development Program/East-West Center Commentary KEEP GOVERNMENT OUT OF PUBLIC BROADCASTING The public broadcasting debate at the [recent] Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) conference in Port Vila has great relevance for the region. The head of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Mark Scott, told the conference about the growing importance and appreciation of public broadcasting in a fiercely competitive and rapidly changing media environment. Through its founding charter and constitution, the ABC is an independent broadcaster. It selects news, current affairs and sports assignments on the basis of their news or relevance value as gauged by a team of widely experienced editors. As a result it can and does publish television and radio reports that may not put its ostensible owner -- the government of Australia -- in the best light. The ABC through its board and management fiercely guard this independence against all challengers – of which there has been no shortage over the years. This has prompted the important question from one of the heads of the publicly-owned island broadcasters: "How can we make our governments realize that funding media organizations does not mean that they have to dictate the content and in particular the news?" This is a vital question to which there is short answer but if the people are to be served by a reliable, unbiased public broadcaster, it’s clear that governments must be kept separate from editorial decision making. Indeed there is a growing perception in the print media that PINA has become a government broadcasters’ club and as such has lost much of its independence -- but that’s another story for another day. The real difficulty for the public broadcasters is that governments -- often deliberately -- confuse public ownership with government ownership. What’s the use, they might argue, of owning a radio station if it won’t say what we tell it to say? If they did own the radio station, the argument might be valid -- but of course they don’t. If, for instance, they supported that radio station with party or personal funds, there could be no argument -- but the fact is they are using the public’s money. Of course that won’t stop politicians from trying to make the media do their bidding and holding the purse strings of somebody else’s money -- that is to say our money -- is an excellent way to achieve that. It’s why the ABC’s charter is so vital. The last to try to bring the ABC to heel was John Howard. He had to back down in the face of determined -- and very public -- opposition from all sections of Australian society. Most governments and the politicians who inhabit them are not stupid -- despite what we may say about them from time to time. They are human and fallible like the rest of us even if we’ll never get them to admit it. Therefore the temptation to control the media is just too strong for them to ignore and in the absence of proper protection public broadcasters are in danger of becoming government broadcasters. A few already blatantly serve whichever government happens to be in power. And the rot is spreading with more than a few envious eyes on how Fiji’s illegal regime has taken full control of the media -- even though it has done it and the country nothing but harm. Governments around the world are obsessed by the media and our part of the planet is no different. There’s nothing particularly new, unusual or even wrong about that. But the temptation to control what is published or broadcast should be removed for the benefit of the communities those broadcasters serve or should serve -- that is the audiences not their governments. After all, they’re the ones picking up the bills. But that will only be achieved through ironclad guarantees of independence which so far, for the most part, are lacking. Samoa Observer:
www.samoaobserver.ws/
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