Public Service Broadcast as it is with UK Broadcasting Research Unit (1981–1991), is relevant to Malawi because it can enhance media independence, professionalism, build trust and dependency, serve the public with social responsibility and design better ways of broadcaster survival.
To begin with the PSB theory has to be understood. There is no standard definition for public broadcasting, although a number of official bodies have attempted to identify key characteristics. Public-service broadcasters may transmit programming intended to inform, or of cultural value; the aim of much commercial broadcasting is to provide content that attracts a large audience, maximizing revenue from advertising and sponsorship. However, publicly funded broadcasters may transmit popular programs with little informational or cultural value and commercial broadcasters may be obliged by the terms of their license to transmit programs considered to be of value, but with appeal to only small audiences. The distinction between public and commercial is not always clear, for example, UK Channel 4 is ultimately publicly-owned but largely commercially self-funded, and transmits much entertainment but is subject to a public service remit.
However (www.en.wikipedia.org) in 1985, the UK Broadcasting Research Unit (1981–1991) defined public service broadcasting as involving
- Geographic universality — The stations' broadcasts are available nationwide, with no exception. Generally, the "nationwide" criterion is satisfied by either having member stations across the country (as is the case with PBS) or, as is the case with most other public broadcasters around the world, the broadcaster's use of sufficient transmitters to broadcast nationwide (as with ABC Radio National across Australia).
- Catering for all interests and tastes — as exemplified by the BBC's range of minority channels (BBC Four and BBC Radio 3).
- Catering for minorities — much as above, but with racial and linguistic minorities. (For example S4C in Wales, BBC Asian Network, Radio-Canada, and Australia's multicultural Special Broadcasting Service (SBS)).
- Concern for national identity and community — this essentially means that the stations mostly part-commission programmes from within the country, even if more expensive than importing shows.
- Detachment from vested interests and government in which programming is impartial, and the broadcaster is not to be subject to control by advertisers or government. Even when a broadcast medium is removed from corporate and government interests, critics argue that it may nonetheless have a bias towards the values of certain groups, such as the middle class, the politics of the incumbent government, or in the case of partially or wholly commercially funded networks, the advertisers.
- One broadcasting system to be directly funded by the corpus of users — For example, the licence fee in the case of the BBC, or member stations asking for donations in the case of PBS/NPR.
- Competition in good programming rather than numbers — quality is the prime concern with a true public service broadcaster. Of course, in practice, ratings wars are rarely concerned with quality, although that may depend on how "quality" is defined.
- Guidelines to liberate programme-makers and not restrict them — in the UK, guidelines, and not laws, govern what a programme-maker can and cannot do, although these guidelines can be backed up by hefty penalties.
Whether the Public Service Broadcaster wears the face of government or private sector, it will demand media independence. This term academically encompasses several ideas that all converge at allowing media practitioners exercise their thinking in the context of their profession and the readers. These practitioners need to design programs that reflect peoples or audience interest or values free from governement or advertisers vested interest. They also strive to meet the so called public interest in their daily operations that supports both taste of majority as well as minority but all driven to a common denominator. And eventually their independence will enable lead them into specialized strategic, administration and operational managerial activities for them to provide a quality service to the society they serve.
But the notion of media independence in Malawi whose system of government dwells on three arms of government thus Executive, Legislature and Judiciary; neither does entertain the demand nor allow the PSB theory be put in practice. This is because the media is still been forced to serve their vested political ideologies which collide with the principle of public service broadcasting. For example, the current Democratic Progressive Party is denying the media organizations media freedom. This is shown where reporters are being beaten and threatened, the party imposes itself on MACRA to enforce media organization to have one way thinking towards support of government of the day otherwise withdrawal of broadcasting licence, extreme control over MBC TV and Radios, amendment of section 64 where the minister of Information and Civic Educated is given mandate to stop operations of a media organization if found writing constructive advices against the president and his government. This is denying exercise of press freedoms which are put in writing is section 35-37. This is again in conflict with PSB’s factor 2 and 5.
The PSB theory also enhances media professionalism. This is because the theory indirectly demands quality services that have taste to both majority and minority groups in that society. This means social economics issues will have to be prepared and presented by specialized communicators who have a better background of the discipline through local and international development studies. This applies to other philosophical disciplines like medicine, politics, etc.
In most of programs that are aired or written in respective media organizations in Malawi lack taste and impact because the ones who prepare and present lack knowledge and competence of that field just because there serve no culture of specialization.
For example, one would like to watch a football match between Malawi and Egypt on Botswana TV rather than MBC TV although they all broadcast via satellite just because of accuracy, uniqueness, competence and knowledge expressed in the commentary. Commentary deals with people’s cognitive thinking mostly when they are watching and not people’s desires or emotions which are end products of psychological reaction. How can one make it the same being a presenter of TB, Youth and Women programs as well as a producer of prison life and parliament programs? This reflects lack of professionalism to master one or two philosophical disciplines which hold different systems of social sciences. (Baran 2002: 375) discusses one of four important ideas that have to be recognized when understanding mass communication of which the second idea states that Mass communication theories are often borrowed from other fields of science. The social construction of reality theory (the cheese question) comes from sociology. Attitude change theory (the dime question) is borrowed from psychology. He continues to say that mass communication theorists adapt these borrowed theories to questions and issues in communication. People’s behavior with regard to issues more important than the size of the dime-democracy, ethnicity, government and gender roles, for example-is influenced by the attitudes and perceptions presented by our mass media.
This specialization being a component of professionalism eventually will demand need for strategic, tactic and operational managers that collectively will manage quality service provision.
Public Broadcast Service which enhances media independence and professionalism builds trust and dependency of the public on media. The media messages become credible and trustworthy to many people even if those people can hold different ideologies. This is because the media ideals of communication remain being truthful, honest, ethical, decent and lawful all in umbrella of meaning making. This drives at media service of public interest which according to (www.en.wikipedia.org) Public Interest theory is an economic theory first developed by Arthur Cecil Pigou that holds that regulation is supplied in response to the demand of the public for the correction of inefficient or inequitable market practices. Regulation is assumed initially to benefit society as whole rather than particular vested interests. The regulatory body is considered to represent the interest of the society in which it operates rather than the private interests of the regulators.
This public interest further come to reality when the media is cultured with social enhances fulfillment of media Social Responsibility Theory. This theory according to (Fedler 1978: 98) argues that media has the social responsibility of serving the public interest. The theory argues that media should remain free because it has responsibilities. The theory’s proponents argue that society grants the press certain rights, and that the press loses its claim to those rights if it abuses or fails to use them responsibly. The theory insists that the public has the right to be informed, and that the media have a responsibility to provide the information needed to be good citizen. The information must be accurate, fair, complete and untainted by the medias own biases. The social responsibility theory however insists that the press has the right to make honest mistakes, since errors are inevitable part of the learning process, but no to deliberately lie.
For example, most African top news or events that are enjoy maximum coverage relate with war, political strife, hunger, drought, disease and ill-health and less of entrepreneurship development and successes, improvement of talents, discoveries and opportunities. In Malawi, political collisions and HIV/AIDS issues enjoy most of media coverage just because they serve vested interests of masters who provide bread and batter for media survival. Some of these masters that dominate over media with their own interest regardless of media’s social responsibilities are government department and National Aids Commission and its auxiliary organizations; to the private sector are prominent advertisers like MTL, TNM, Airtel, etc. Therefore if PSB theory can be put in practice in Malawi media space can be created which can be used to cover social economic issues affecting Malawi as developing country negatively as well as positively. Evidently there is no program on any of Television Program in Malawi that exposes local talent from rural to urban and to the outside of the country yet a an Airtel sponsored documentary of Ronaldo a Brazilian footballer whom many already know can be aired all week round on MBC TV; like wise there is no program to clearly inform the public about progresses and forecasts of mining industry in Malawi. Many Malawians only know that in Karonga, Mzimba and Rumphi and Mwanza districts there is Uranium and coal mines but do not know how much it sell and how the country is benefiting apart from other minerals like bauxite, oil, diamond, and precious stones like rubi just to mention a few. In addition, I sight that Malawi has 16 (presented as 160%) economic indicators of which include education, health, agriculture, trade and industry, information communication technology, unemployment, balance of payment, infrastructure, transport, mining, security, international relations, mechanics, talent, innovations and discoveries/inventions and politics but the media dominantly cover politics, health agriculture and education representing 40% out of 160% coverage yet in that 40% covered shows no opportunities for economic growth nor construct better ways of improving and/or attracting international eyes, its all about reporting how poor Malawians are and reporting what United Nations Organization’s secretariat has decided and member states agreed to meet like the everlasting dream of Millennium Development Goals in Malawi.
Even Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority in Communications Act 1998 put it in writing on section 45 - Regulation of Broadcasting that it shall regulate the broadcasting operations in Malawi with public interest. With a comparative view of Canada to Malawi, (www.unesco.org) argues that under the Canadian constitution, broadcasting is a matter of federal jurisdiction given its transcendent national significance. The broadcast regulatory regime was placed in proper context by the Federal Court of Appeal when it stated that, "the importance of broadcasting to the life of the country is reflected in Section 3(b) of the Broadcasting Act, which [provides] that ‘the Canadian broadcasting system should be effectively owned and controlled by Canadians so as to safeguard, enrich and strengthen the cultural, political, social and economic fibre of Canada.’" (47) (Independent-Media Regulation). The cornerstone of the regulatory regime is the 1991 Broadcasting Act (BA) (48) which defines the basic mandate and philosophy for broadcasting in Canada, and creates an independent administrative agency, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to implement and administer the nation’s broadcasting policy. The BA also establishes the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) as Canada’s public service broadcasting organisation. This section will discuss the public mandate of the CBC, its services, and funding structures, as well as the regulatory relationships between the CBC as public service broadcasting organisation, the CRTC as broadcast regulator and Parliament as the ultimate arbiter of broadcast policy and practice.
Finally, PSB is relevant to Malawi because it can help government controlled broadcasters not to be directly controlled in decision making as well as funding. For example, MBC TV could be getting funding from tax payers money through levies like from Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi and Malawi Revenue Authority. At the same time it could survive on adverts which it does already. Like wise ZODIAK Broadcasting Service radio could subscribe certain programs to the public as a way of sourcing funding apart from adverts. But in practice for the public to directly support a program or an event, this theory of PSB has to be flooded to the public through broadcast service to prove and convince individuals. And when individual start to contribute finances to fund a particular program, there is need for that broadcaster to show ethical and honest conduct in management of the finances and the content and technical expertise of the program has to reflect the amount funded. This scenario has just blasted Reach Out and Touch program at MBC TV which was running on individual contributions from all regions of Malawi and it is reported that the Director General embezzled such finances and currently is on forced leave. This though not officially announced it has already affected negatively the trust and dependency that the public put on MBC TV.
This is how PSB can be of relevant to Malawi as a developing country directly to media and the public.
REFERENCES
Baran, SJ. (2002). Introduction to Mass Communication. 2nd edition. Boston, McGraw Hill.
Fedler, F. (1978). Introduction to Mass Media. New York-Harcourt Base, Janvavid Inc.
Mendel, T. 2000. Public Service Broadcasting. A comparative Legal Survey - Kuala Lumpur: UNESCO, Asia Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development. Accessed at
http://www.unesco.org/webworld/publications/mendel/canada.html. [29/07/11]
Wikipedia (2011). Defining Public Service Broadcasting. Accessed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_broadcasting. [26/07/11]
Wikipedia (2011). Public interest. Accessed at theoryhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_interest_theory. [30/07/11]
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