This is an iteresting overview of some of the reasons why European public broadcasting is in crisis. What is seriously lacking though is any mention of what it means, or, let's be fair, what it meant.
I see this piece as a good example of the difficulties of understanding and explaining "differences," and I would like to discuss it in class tomorrow. Think about it.
The New York Times - State-Aided Broadcasting Faces Scrutiny Across Europe
February 16, 2004
State-Aided Broadcasting Faces Scrutiny Across Europe
By ERIC PFANNER
International Herald Tribune
Like the country homes where its costume dramas are set, public broadcasting has long seemed like a fixture of the media landscape in Europe, featuring programming that is regarded by many as part of their cultural identity.
But lately, public broadcasters have been thrust into the harsh glare of their own klieg lights. At the BBC and at a French public television network, France 2, top executives have resigned after journalists were cited for mistakes in reporting. In Italy, the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has moved to increase its oversight of the public broadcaster RAI, raising concerns about independence of news and other programming.
The new concerns come at a particularly bad time for broadcasters, as regulators and competitors are gearing up for a closer look at their mission, and at the fees or taxes that sustain them.
Some viewers and private-sector competitors are complaining ever more loudly about the nearly 20 billion euros ($25.5 billion) in public financing that public television and radio receive across Europe.
"Public service broadcasting is in a struggle to remain relevant," an executive at one large European public broadcaster said, insisting on anonymity. "It will live or die based on its credibility."
Some experts say the struggle for relevance plays a part in news reporting lapses at the BBC and at France 2. Last week, as the furor over a report critical of the BBC's reporting on the British government's case for war in Iraq was easing, France 2's news director was forced to resign, and a popular anchor was suspended.
They had wrongly reported on the nightly newscast that the former prime minister, Alain Juppé, planned to resign from various political posts after being convicted on corruption charges. At the same time, Mr. Juppé was actually announcing on the rival TF1 channel, which is privately owned, that he planned to stay on.
As conspiracy theories swirled, some journalists at France 2 said there were signs of a plot by the right-leaning government of President Jacques Chirac to discredit public broadcasting - never particularly popular with conservatives - by giving France 2 a bum steer on the Juppé news. But others said the mistake probably had more to do with France 2's desperate struggle to stay competitive with TF1 despite trailing badly in ratings and resources.
The difficulty of striking a balance between quality and commercial success is an increasingly common lament among many public broadcasters in Europe.
"We're supposed to have quality programming that is up to par with Arte," a publicly financed, French-German venture that shows highbrow cultural programs, said Alban Mikoczy, a high-ranking editor at France 2.
Political interference has been more obvious in Italy, where the RAI public broadcasting system is governed by a board dominated by political appointees loyal to the prime minister. Analysts cite numerous instances in which Mr. Berlusconi has used his influence to prevent programming critical of him or his government from being aired.
Now, some executives at the BBC, long regarded as the gold standard of independence among publicly financed broadcasters, are worried that it could come under increased political pressure, after an outside report sided firmly against a BBC reporter's claims that the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair had intentionally "sexed up" reports on whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
The government is reviewing candidates for chairman of the BBC's board, after Gavyn Davies, the previous chairman, and Greg Dyke, the director general and day-to-day manager, resigned after the inquiry. Both had stood firm after the government objected to its reporting.
The BBC's setback came at an inopportune time. With a review of the broadcaster's charter due in 2006, British regulators have begun work on a broad examination of public service broadcasting; a report is to be published in April. The Times of London reported on Sunday that the government is considering a range of proposals for the BBC, including breaking it up into separate units for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Meanwhile, the BBC has delayed work on its own recommendations for the charter review, pending the appointment of a new leader.
Given the politically charged backdrop, the BBC is preparing to parry assaults on the license fee, which provides it with about £2.5 billion ($4.7 billion) a year, the majority of its revenue. Anyone in Britain with a television must pay £112 a year.
The financing and structure of public broadcasting varies widely across Europe. Some broadcasters are financed almost entirely by license fees or taxes; others, like Britain's government-chartered Channel 4, rely entirely on commercial money. Still others, particularly in southern Europe, are a hybrid, accepting financing from both sources. Germany provides the biggest amount of public financing - 6.6 billion euros ($8.4 billion) last year for the broadcasters ARD and ZDF, which also obtain some of their money from commercial means.
To some private investors who are vying with public networks for viewers, that is unfair competition.
Last year, after he assumed control of ProSiebenSat1, Germany's second-biggest commercial TV business after Bertelsmann's RTL, the American media entrepreneur Haim Saban criticized the German system in a newspaper interview.
"There's something I don't understand," Mr. Saban said. "How can public broadcasters that receive millions and millions of euros in fee revenues have the right to broadcast commercials and siphon 400 million euros to 500 million euros in advertising revenue from private broadcasters?"
But with more than 40 percent market share, public television remains popular in Germany, and proposals to overhaul the system radically have not gotten far, though there have been efforts to tinker around the edges.
In France, however, the specter of privatization has been dangled at France 2 and at Radio France, the public radio system, where journalists went back to work over the weekend after a five-week strike over pay. After all, the government sold off TF1 in 1987 - and it leads France 2 by a wide margin in the ratings race.
As in Britain, French regulators are preparing this summer to study consumer attitudes toward public service broadcasting. European Union regulators are also taking an interest. Brussels, which has taken a tough stance against government aid in other industries, has steered clear of public financing for the media because of the political and cultural sensitivities; lobbyists for public broadcasters worry privately, however, that the recent developments will embolden regulators to listen more carefully to those who would like to see such financing abolished.
Until recently, the BBC was seen by many analysts as a model of how a public broadcaster could adapt to a more competitive commercial setting. It maintains a vast production operation, employing tens of thousands of Britons and providing a counterweight to the American programming juggernaut. And the previous leadership moved to expand in areas such as children's broadcasting, digital archive services and the Internet.
While the BBC has drawn criticism for what some Britons say is a dumbing-down of the broadcaster's once-highbrow programming, others welcome the move away from what they see as a snobbish tradition of noblesse oblige, rooted in a discredited class system.
But critics of the BBC also questioned whether the broadcaster's new marketplace focus might have led it to push the envelope too far in its reporting of Blair's case for war.
Regardless of the outcome of the license fee review, commercial pressures on public broadcasters will only grow in coming years as governments manage the transition from analog to digital broadcasting. Millions of Europeans already subscribe to digital satellite services, and digital terrestrial technology is eventually intended to render analog broadcasting obsolete.
That will mean a proliferation of viewer choice, making life even more challenging for public broadcasters - even if they do not compound the damage with their own journalistic mistakes and political miscalculations.
Kevin O'Brien in Berlin, Eric Sylvers in Milan and Elisabeth Franck-Dumas in Paris contributed reporting for this article.
This is an EXCELLENT site. In some ways, I think reading opinions is more helpful. As an outsider preparing to travel and report in Europe, it helps to see the range of opinions and then fill in with facts.
(As long as I know the background of the opinion-giver and the context.)