Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

INFORMATION AND DEMOCRACY
the years, even though features of this independence have changed. In its early
days under Reith the BBC was separate from government officials and disdainful
of the business world, but it was an autocratically run organisation with an
elitist orientation. Public service then was taken to mean the transmission of
programmes that were considered worthy by custodians of what is now regarded
as a rather outdated philosophy – in essence, Matthew Arnold’s credo ‘the best
that is known and thought in the world’. 2 In the 1960s circumstances were such
as to allow public service to be interpreted in quite a daring and at times radical
and irreverent manner while institutional independence was maintained. Under
the directorship of Sir Hugh Greene (Tracey, 1983), at a time when the economy
was booming, television ownership increasing and thereby ensuring the BBC an
annual rise in revenue from additional licence fees, when the political climate was
relatively tolerant and relaxed, public service was liable to be perceived as
including challenging, innovative programming that could awaken audiences to
new and often disconcerting experiences.
Over time it is possible to trace changes in conceptions of public service
broadcasting (Briggs, 1985), with an ethos of professionalism (public service broadcasting
being seen as a matter of producing intelligent, well-made, unbiased,
interesting and challenging programmes) coming to displace earlier emphases on
paternal responsibility in the Reithian mode (Madge, 1989). As we shall see, while
professional ethics are important to contemporary programme makers, they do
not readily provide them with a public philosophy of broadcasting with which
to respond to sharp attacks on the BBC. Furthermore, with hindsight we can see
that public service broadcasting depended, in part at least, on the presumption of
a unified – or potentially united – audience. For good or ill, since the late 1960s
the divisions among audiences have become very evident and have made it
difficult to speak without heavy qualification of a ‘general public’, giving rise to
some hesitancy and indecision in broadcasting (just who is public service broadcasting
addressing, and who is it not?) and leaving it more vulnerable to assault
from critics.
Changes have been still more profound since the 1980s. For instance,
Michael Jackson (2001), a former Controller-General of BBC2 and outgoing Head
of Channel 4, went so far as to argue that the postmodern times in which we
now live mean that public service television is a ‘redundant piece of voodoo . . .
drained of all purpose and meaning’. This is so because audiences are now much
less passive, more ironic and interactive in today’s ‘versatile culture’. Above all,
Jackson continued, the diversity of postmodern culture means that minority
programmes are now the mainstream, thereby shattering the ‘paternalistic’
premise of public service broadcasting that there is a type of television content
all viewers ought to have.
I review further aspects of these changes below, but underline here the at
least one-time confluence of public service broadcasting – shifting interpretations
of what this meant notwithstanding – and Habermas’s notion of the public sphere.
Above all, there is the commitment to the independence and impartiality of the
broadcasting institutions from governments and commerce, along with the accessibility
to programming of viewers and listeners without restriction. At the core
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