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What is Public Value and What Do Community Media Have to Do with It?
A Radio FRO project within the frame of Ars Electronica Festival 2006
 Panel I - English simultaneous translation (unedited)
Panel II - English simultaneous translation (unedited)
download/listen to the recording of panel I (German)
download/listen to the recording of panel II (German)
The much-discussed cultural revolution of the last 10 years has had an especially strong impact on how media mediate information, and has put in place completely new ground rules with respect to possibilities for the active expression of opinions. The emergence of what are basically interactively oriented Internet media such as weblogs and wikis has exponentially increased not only the number of available sources of information but also the complexity of an ever-more-multifaceted media world. At the same time, though, it’s remarkable how “old-fashioned” analogous technologies are still able to assert themselves and even expand their turf as instruments for networking within civil society and as alternative medial and cultural production facilities. Community radio and TV are once again on the upswing worldwide.
In this changed media world, the time has come to restart the discussion of the mission to serve the public interest that most Western democracies assign to public broadcasting systems and finance with public funds—above all, fees paid by users. The Treaty of Rome1 that established the European Economic Community, for instance, requires that commissions “subject to public law” be granted only for activities performed in the public interest. According to the provisions of the Amsterdam Protocol of the Treaty of Rome, the only activities that can be part of such a mission to broadcast public interest content are those that serve society’s democratic, social and cultural needs and that contribute to maintaining pluralism in the media.2
There is an essential structural difference between the mission carried out by participative community media oriented on enhancing communicative rather than economic value and that of traditional public broadcasting systems like Austria's ORF, RAI in Italy and the “mother of all public broadcasting systems,” the BBC. Whereas governments assign these institutions an explicit mission to broadcast informational, educational and cultural programming—which they have a harder and harder time carrying out in an increasingly commercialized media landscape—alternative and community media explicitly assign themselves the mission to broadcast in the public interest. These media outlets are open to anyone wishing to articulate his/her opinion; thus, their highest priority is on the active production of opinions and the expression thereof, and not merely on consuming information. Accordingly, these public access media outlets are the ones that are actually doing the essential work of actively implementing the right to freedom of expression established in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and the European Court of Justice (ECJ)3 have continually reiterated the view that the state is obliged to actively support the process of putting this freedom into actual practice.
From this perspective, it seems indisputable that community media—and especially free radio and community TV outlets that operate according to the public access principle—are fulfilling a specific mission to broadcast in the public interest that no other media outlets are in a position to carry out. Accordingly, there is less and less doubt expressed as to public access media’s relevance to the process of nurturing a healthy, functioning democracy and to encouraging citizen involvement in the political process; the important job that community media are doing on behalf of the social integration of (medially) marginalized social groups, for the promotion of local and regional artistic and cultural production, or in the regional development of isolated rural areas seems to be ever more widely acknowledged and accepted. In their absence, it would hardly be possible to bring together in such a highly concentrated form the necessary medial expertise, intercultural competence and social skills that result from active work with media and the establishment of linkages across the entire spectrum of social groups that almost inevitably goes along with this.
In many European countries, these facts are acknowledged both legally and financially. In Ireland, Great Britain, the Scandinavian countries, Germany and France, it is considered standard practice of a developed democracy to grant these media both explicit legal recognition and financial subsidies. The respective legal regulations in these countries refer to, among other factors, the “services in the public interest” that these media provide. Nevertheless, most Eastern and Central European states—including Austria—do not proceed in accordance with this “public interest mission” line of argumentation, even though ample declarations have been produced by European institutions that underscore, in light of increasing media concentration, the state’s responsibility to maintain or create media diversity and opinion diversity, and that explicitly refer to the essential role that free and community media play in this regard.
These developments also confront traditional public broadcasting systems with a new situation. They have long since ceased to be the only media explicitly carrying out public service functions, and they thus face growing pressure to justify the fact that they are financed by fees paid by users. After all, the legitimacy of this arrangement is ultimately based on their claim to be providing broadcast services in the public interest, and increasing doubt has been expressed about these services in recent years in many countries. In Germany, for instance, the ARD has had to confront charges of illegitimately using surreptitious advertising to generate revenue. There is widespread criticism that there has been a decline in the quality of the offerings on public broadcasting stations, whose programming and formats have increasingly come to resemble those of their commercial competitors. Furthermore, Austria's ORF is accused of having abandoned its independence, of being subjected to ruthlessly partisan influence by political parties and government officials, of permitting virtually no critical reportage to be aired4 and of allowing art and culture “to vanish into a black hole.”5
In contrast to the ORF, the BBC, the British public broadcasting system, must face a public consultation process every 10 years in order for its license to produce programming financed by user fees to be renewed. In March 2006, the British government released the latest BBC White Paper6 that was designed to define the BBC’s role, function and structure in a changed media environment. In a paper published by the BBC itself in 2005,7 that institution summarized its mission as “building public value,” the production of which—as well as the lack thereof—could purportedly be tested in a practical way. The BBC was said to produce five-fold public value: democratic value, cultural and creative value, educational value, social and community value, and global value. It went on to maintain that all of the BBC’s broadcast services could be objectively evaluated by a “public value test.”8. Nevertheless, a precise definition of public value seems to be a difficult matter since, in contrast to the market value of a service, the non-material value a broadcast service provides to society is an abstract magnitude that immediately raises more questions than it answers.
In an increasingly commercialized media world of global media conglomerates, democracy-threatening media concentration and market-oriented disinformation, Radio FRO’s contribution to this year's Festival is focusing on questions having to do with the public value of media and media production. What demands do democratic societies place on media today? How does “public broadcasting” define itself in a changed media world? How do various different media go about fulfilling their mission to work in the public interest? To what extent are traditional public broadcasting systems even pursuing this mission nowadays? What are the obligations of the state with regard to the public service mission of community media? Can a mission to provide public service content be conveyed to Internet media? And: How is public value to be defined in contemporary societies? What actually is the public value of productions in the various different media? Can public value be “measured”?
Veronika Leiner, Alexander Baratsits / Radio FRO
Also see the  link list for further materials.
1 See Art 86 Abs 2 EG
2 See Kletter, M.: Die Finanzierung des ORF mittel Programmentgelten. Eine Betrachtung im Lichte der Novelle des ORF-G und der neuesten Entwicklungen im Gemeinschaftsrecht (The Financing of the Austrian Broadcasting Company through Program Fees: Considerations in Light of Amendments to the Public Broadcasting Law and the Latest Developments in Community Law). MR 2001, 260.
3 The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is an organ of the European Council, whereas the European Court of Justice (ECJ) is an organ of the European Union.
4 See http://www.sos-orf.at
5 See http://kulturrat.at
6 “A public service for all. The BBC in the digital age,” 2006. http://www.bbccharterreview.org.uk/have_your_say/white_paper/bbc_whitepaper_march06.pdf
7 “Building public value. Renewing the BBC for a digital world,” 2005. http://www.bbc.co.uk/thefuture/pdfs/bbc_bpv.pdf
8 See “A public service for all. The BBC in the digital age. 2006,” p. 30 ff. http://www.bbccharterreview.org.uk/have_your_say/white_paper/bbc_whitepaper_march06.pdf
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