More than a century ago, public broadcasting institutions were established, driven by three noble goals: to educate, to inform, and to entertain. In these same countries, between financial cuts and crises of legitimacy, these large organizations must redefine themselves, or even justify their existence. In this four-part series, The Duty profiles different public media in the United States and Europe. Today, the last in the series: the question of financing public media.
President Richard Nixon hated PBS (Public Broadcasting Service), as did one of his successors, Ronald Reagan, who expressed his desire to close the network. In 2012, during a debate with Barack Obama during the presidential election, Republican candidate Mitt Romney admitted to liking Big Bird (one of the famous characters from the series Sesame Street), but didn’t see the point of “borrowing money from China to finance this.” That being PBS…
This debate about funding public media has been going on since their inception, particularly in the United States, where many of the people behind NPR and PBS dream of a model like the BBC, which the richest country on the planet could afford to support. But for ideological reasons, support for public media is minimal, and supposedly depoliticized, by organizations like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts.
According to Jeffrey Dvorkin, author of Trusting the News in a Digital Agethis reluctance has its source in the American Constitution. “The First Amendment stipulates that the government cannot impose laws limiting freedom of religion, speech and the press. It cannot therefore exert influence on what is published. Hence this suspicion of everything that comes from the federal state,” deplores this former journalist for the English network of Radio-Canada (CBC), having also worked for several years at NPR and contributed to a profound transformation.
In contrast, what has made public media flourish in Europe and Canada is due to technological developments and economic prosperity, but also to hopes born from the ashes of the Second World War. According to Aimé-Jules Bizimana, co-author of the essay Public media service in the digital age. Radio-Canada, BBC, France Télévisions: shared experiences“the whole world saw the ravages caused by propaganda, a concept that had a bad reputation, and people began to talk about public affairs, public communications.” This is how media outlets such as BBC International, Voice of America, and Radio-Canada International flourished.
To maintain effective technological infrastructures and to shine both at home and abroad, public media rely in whole or in part on governments. This trend has eroded almost everywhere—the combined effects of economic crises and neoliberalism—undermining various funding models: royalties on the purchase of televisions and electronic devices in the United Kingdom; royalties on electricity bills in Italy; state funding, with permission to use advertising, as for Radio-Canada and Télé-Québec.
In his meticulous examination of public media, supported by professors Gaëtan Tremblay and Oumar Kane, it is impossible, according to Aimé-Jules Bizimana, to determine the best financing system and apply it elsewhere. “We cannot separate the history of a public media, the BBC for example, from its country, the United Kingdom. At the time of the founding of this public service, the British were in love with a great desire for freedom.” On the other hand, in the aftermath of the Second World War, France established a state monopoly on radio and television: in 1964, the Office de radiodiffusion-télévision française (ORTF) was born, totally subservient to the Ministry of Information until its closure in 1975.
Between the quest and the tax
The historical choices to create and develop public media reverberate to this day. The founders of NPR, PBS and Radio-Canada saw the BBC as an ideal, but state funding and a meager private sector presence seemed indefensible. Here, the hybrid grant-advertising model requires budgetary ingenuity and compromise. On the American side, advertising spots are short, never thunderous and, in addition to the generosity of foundations, that of the public is highly solicited, several times a year, for several days, often in the manner of a telethon.
Alain Saulnier, formerly director general of information at Radio-Canada, now freely observes the evolution of his former employer (Here was Radio-Canada), as well as that of the web giants (The Digital Barbarians). He too dreams of a public service without advertising, saluting in passing the courage of the former leaders to have completely removed it from radio in 1974. “Unfortunately, a breach opened with the arrival of Tou.tv, then Radio-Canada OHdio, deplores the journalism professor at the University of Montreal. The current management is completely deviating from this decision. In any case, the media in general, and public media in particular, are no longer the masters of the game: the GAFAM control almost all communications everywhere in the world, and Canada is an extremely vulnerable country.” Sometimes, a simple update of security software is enough for the planet to discover it with horror.
Alain Saulnier is not afraid of the word “hated”: a tax would be necessary. “And why not on all devices with a screen,” he argues with conviction. “The content is found on our phones as well as our tablets. What is needed is a lasting solution, not a variation of the gasoline tax to support public transportation while governments encourage the purchase of electric cars. This is a short-sighted decision: they may consume less gasoline, but they still use, and clog, our roads.”
Jeffrey Dvorkin questions this model in light of his experience at NPR as vice president of news from 1997 to 2006. “When I arrived, many stations were complaining about the weakness of our programming. In concert with them, and despite internal resistance, we had to stop spreading ourselves too thin and focus on what we did best: news coverage. Responsibility for the cultural sector was handed over to the stations, which is why we had to abandon programs like SymphonyCast And Performance Today [maintenant produites par l’American Public Media]. »
Working on both sides of the border has transformed Jeffrey Dvorkin’s vision. The consultant believes the CBC needs to reinvent itself, “and not just because Pierre Poilievre is threatening to shut it down if he becomes prime minister.” “The CBC wants to do everything and reach everyone, which is no longer possible in the digital age. Regional stations are subject to Toronto, but the head office does not know the local realities. A more cooperative model, where citizens financially support the station in their corner of the country, would foster creativity. Obviously, it is not a question of cutting subsidies overnight, but of making a gradual transition.”
Alain Saulnier believes instead that the money must come in part “from all these multinationals that do not act as good corporate citizens.” Because beyond its three noble objectives, according to him, public media respond to an urgent need: “to resist the standardization of culture and information.”