Public Media

Last week's lecture was about commercial media, and this week we investigated the other end of the media-spectrum- public media.

Public media is media that is not profit driven, where the ultimate goal is to serve the public. As Australia is in a democratic society, the public media's role is to be unbiased and give needed information to the public. Unfortunately, with some countries where there is not a democracy, public media can sometimes be a platform for forms of propaganda.

Public media has a very important role in our society. It's function involves broadcasting about national heritage, identity, building and conversation. It can bring the public the information about public news, without having another agenda, as commercial media sometimes has.

This means that public media has some serious challenges. One, is definitely getting funding. Because it is not commercially driven, they need to have enough money whilst still being independent. Another is to get more audiences. There are so many media platforms, and all of them so shiny and inviting, that people have called public media too "serious" and "out of touch". This might be true, but I think it is quite refreshing to have some down-to-earth reporting.

One massive plus side to public media is their lack of ads. As Bruce so perfectly said:

"I am insulted by the ads, because I am assaulted by the ads."

Ads are horrible. Ads alone justify to me why people download TV shows from the Internet. And why I am constantly changing radio stations when I drive. And we are more intelligent than commercial media makes us out to be. We want real information. And we definitely do not want ads that make us feel like eternal 5 year olds.

I think that we, myself included, sometimes takes the public media for granted. Especially in Australia, where we have wide access to information, we do not really think about what a privilege it is. So many countries are under control of dictators or governments that censor the media, or control what information gets to the public. Here in Australia, there are several media companies that are there to spread information without government input.