public service versus_ten years on reflections on critical theory and reflections on broadcasting...

8/7/2019 Public service versus_ten years on reflections on critical theory and reflections on broadcasting policy in the UK_R C

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Publ ic serv ice versus the market tenyears on: re f lect ions on Cr i t ica lTheory and the debate o nbroadcast ing pol icy in the UKRICHARD COLLINS

1 N Garnham Public serviceversus the market Screen vol5 no 1 (1983)

M Tracey Our better angelsthe condition of public servicebroadcasting Media InformationAustralia no 66 119921See J Blumler led ) Televisionand the Public InterestVulnerable Values in WestEuropean Broadcasting ILondonSage 19921See Garnham Public serviceversus the marte t N GarnhamThe media and the public

sphere in P Golding et al ledslCommunicating Politics(Leicester Leicester UniversityPress 19861 N Gamham Themedia and the public sphere inC Calhoun led I Habermas an dthe Public Sphere (CambridgeMA MIT Press 19921 J KeaneThe Media and DemocracyICambridge Polity 19911

A decade ago Screen published Nicholas Garnham's 'Public serviceversus the market'1 The article set new terms for academicdiscussion of broadcasting policy in the UK and introduced JiirgenHabermas's work to British communication and media studies. Thedichotomy, between public service and the market, whichGarnham's article constituted, underpinned broadcasting policystudies over the next decade, a decade in which, as Tracey states,2most of the intellectual running was made by market theorists butwhich saw two major approaches to discussion and defence of publicservice broadcasting, one, fundamentally empirical, rooted in ananalysis of and apologia for the actual historical practice ofEuropean public service broadcasters3; and the other, fundamentallytheoretical, rooted in Critical Theory and in Habermas's work inparticular 4 The differences between these approaches can perhapsbest be characterized by stating that the empiricists are concernedwith public service broadcasters and the idealists with public servicebroadcasting One is firmly bound to the concrete practice ofinstitutions and the other to an ideal In consequence the visions ofproponents of public service broadcasting sometimes seem fancifulcreations, bearing little relation to the institutions familiar toEuropean viewers and listeners, while the actual empirical practicesof public service broadcasters sometimes seem difficult to reconcilewith the ideals of public service broadcasting

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S R Ne g n n e Politics and theMass Media in Britain I LondonRouiledge 19891 p 106

In consequence, as Negrine has observed,5 a lack of clarity oftencharactenzes the advocacy of public service broadcasting. Too oftenit is unclear whether broadcasting or broadcasters are beingdefended; whether arguments are rooted in an inductive analysis orwhether they articulate an "ideal typ e', defined deductively Are thecriteria employed in discussion of public service broadcastingdescriptive or evaluative, normative or aspirational9If it is actual institutional practice which is at stake then thearguments can be verified or falsified through empirical andhistorical scrutiny But if their referent is not actual practice, butrather an ideal, then the arguments have to be interrogated on thebasis of their theoretical presuppositions In eithe r case, difficultiesarise from a categorical differentiation of market and public serviceFor the similarities between both the theories advanced byproponents of market and public service broadcasting and theinstitutional histories of market and public service regimes are noless striking than the differences between themThe difficulty of making categorical distinctions between publicservice and market principles is particularly striking in respect of theUnited Kingdom. For the UK has had the longest history of mixedmarket/public service broadcasting of all European states (and, withthe exception of Canada and Australia, probably the longestexperience of a mixed system of any state). But however fuzzy thedistinctions may be, a theoretical approach offers a better basis forthe formulation of broadcasting policy and for analysis andevaluation of the historical performance of public service

broadcasters than does the rival empirical approach For anempirical approach can only offer a measuring rod derived from theaggregate historical performance of public service broadcastersthemselves. Whereas concepts generated independently of theinstitutions and practices which they measure make it possible totranscend the dead weight of historical ' IS'S' and address thefundamental issues of 'oug hts '. It is to a consideration of thetheoretical case made by UK scholars and proponents of publicservice broadcasting that I now turn.

Se e inter alia K e a n e Trie Mediaan d Democracy and H Wilson(e d ) Australian Communicationsand the Public Sphere[Melbourne Macmillan 19891

T h e c a s e f o r p u b l i c s e rv i c e b ro a d c a s t i n gHabermas (mediated by Garnham), became the major theoreticalpoint of reference for proponents of public service broadcasting inBritain in the 1980s, when the concept of 'the public sphere', whichGarnham had first used in 'Public service versus the market' (anddeveloped in his 1986 paper, 'The media and the public sphere'),became part of the common currency of the academic debate onbroadcasting policy.6 Habermas provided proponents of publicservice broadcasting with radically new arguments Before

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7 Report of the C ommittee onBroadcasting IPilkingtoni Cmnd1753 ILondon HMSO 19621

8 Report of the Com mittee onFinancing the BBC (PeacocklCmnd 9824 ILondon HMSO1986)

9 Pilking ton Report para 42

10 Ibid paras 44 48

11 Ibid para 408

12 M Arnold Culture and Anarchy(1869) (Cambridge CambridgeUnive rsity Press 19631 p 6

13 Haley argued for a broadcastingpolicy which woold lead peopleupwards the listener beinginduced through the yearsincreasingly 1o discriminate infavour of the things that aremore worth while Eachprogramme at any given momentmust be ahead of its publicQuoted in A Smith led I BritishBroadcasting (Newton AbbotDavid and Charles 1974)PP B3-4

14 Quoted in Smith BritishBroadcasting

Garnham's brokering of Habermas to the academic community themost fully elaborated rationale for public service broadcasting putforward in the UK was to be found in the Pilkington Report.7 ThePilkington Committee's vision was rooted in the traditional ethos ofBritish broadcasting, stemming from Reith's BBC, but its neo-Arnoldian. and thus rather authoritarian, vision informed the theoryand practice of British broadcasting until the 1980s, when both aneo-Habermasian rationale for public service was articulated and acogent alternative vision of the structure and role of broadcastingwas put forward in the Report of the Committee on Financing theBBC the Peacock ReportPilkington believed that the audience for broadcasting wasvulnerable and should be protected. Radio and, in particular,television (which the Committee judged to be 'the main factor ininfluencing the values and moral standards of our society')' neededto be organized so that viewers (and listeners) were protected, notonly from the baleful influence of a powerful medium, but also fromthemselves and their own tastes and desires. 'To give the publicwhat it wants', Pilkington stated, 'seems at first sightunexceptionable'. But it is 'patronizing and arrogant'.10 For to do sois to assume that viewers and listeners not only know what theywant but also want what is good for them. Such a view, Pilkingtonargued, mistakes 'what the public wants . . . for the publicinterest' " Formulations such as these make it hard to resist theview that Pilkington believed broadcasting required to be controlledby Platonic Guardians, acting as servants of the public but certainlynot expected to take directions from them.Pilkington's was a very Arnoldian vision, not surprisingly, forArnold's vision of culture as 'the best that has been thought andsaid in the world', and as an emancipator, 'the great help out of ourpresent difficulties'," has historically underpinned broadcasting inthe UK Arnold's ideas, for example, lie behind the well knowndefinition of public service broadcasting by a former DirectorGeneral of the BBC, Sir William Haley, as a kind of culturalmountaineering,13 and behind the less well known, but still eloquent,statements of other Directors General of the BBC, such as CharlesCurran and Alasdair Milne. Curran asserted that the BBC'sresponsibility was to educate 'the audience to make the choiceswhich have been communicated to it. We must not allow ourselvesto slip into the despairing attitude of seeing ourselves as castingpearls before swine . . The course of wisdom is for us to seeourselves as casting our pearls before people who have been taughtby us to appreciate their value'.14 And Milne, in a particularlymessianic version of the BBC's traditional 'transmission mentality',suggested that 'broadcasting is not a matter of one person sending asignal to anoth er . . it is a process of scattering and thus sowingseed far wide [sic]. Some will fall on stoney ground and some on

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15 Cited in the Peacock Report,p 130

16 Arnold Culture and Anarchyp 204

fertile ground. Broadcasting means that the sower waits to see whatgrows'.1SHaley, Curran and, as the Peacock Committee recognized, Milneclearly give voice to the authoritarian side of the British philosophyof public service broadcasting Here too the re are no table echoes ofArnold. The authoritarian dimension of Arnold's doctrines ofsweetness and light are less often recognized than the emancipatoryclaims he made for culture But Arnold had a clear, veryPilkingtonian, conception of the interdependence of culture andpolitical order. He wrote'

A state in which law is authoritative and sovereign, a firm andsettled course of public order, is requisite if man is to bring tomaturity anything precious and lasting now or to found anythingprecious and lasting for the future Thus, in our eyes, the veryframework and exterior order of the state, whoever mayadminister the state, is sacred; and culture is the most resoluteenemy of anarchy, because of the great hopes and designs for thestate which culture teaches us to nourish.16

It is easier to trace the influence of Matthew Arnold on publicservice broadcasting than it is to trace the influence of CriticalTheory In this sense a discussion of Haberm as and the British neo-Habermasians, and their role in broadcasting policy, is a strictlyacademic project In the context of a journal issue devoted toCritical Theory and its pertinence to the mass media it is particularlysalutary to recognize how little influence Habermas and otherCritical Theorists have actually had on the principles and practice ofpublic service broadcasting in the United Kingdom. However,although a neo-Habermasian influence on UK broadcasting policyhas yet to be realized, its potential importance cannot be doubted.For the neo-Habermasians both anticipated and responded to achange in the terms in which UK broadcasting policy was discussed.Publication of the Peacock Report signalled a radical change in thesuperordinate values involved. Peacock's proposals were based onlibertarian values rather than on the authoritarian values in whichthe Pilkington Report was grounded. They constituted a particularlypowerful challenge to the intellectual and institutional hegemony ofpublic service broadcasting and its proponents. The discovery ofHabermas and the possibility his work offered for the developmentof a libertarian rationale for public service broadcasting wastherefore both timely and necessary.

Thus, although Garnham's 1983 article was titled 'Public serviceversus the market' (and the UK broadcasting policy debate of thelast decade does appear to have been conducted by irreconcilableantagonists), important values are now shared by proponents ofpublic service and market principles Haberm as, in other words,offered proponents of public service broadcasting the emancipatory

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17 See for example the PeacockReport M Friedm an andR Friedman Free to ChooseINew York Avon 19811 SBfitlan The fight for freedom inbroadcasting Political Quarterlyvol 58 no 1 (13871

18 An awkward translation ofHabermas s term Qffentlichkeitbut one wfiich has become sosanctified by use that it isinescapable Public forum mighthave been better than publicsphere

19 J Habermas The public sphereNe w German Critique no 3|1974| reprinted in A Matte lartand S Sieoelaub (eds!Communication and ClassStruggle (New YorkInternational General 19791

20 J Habermas M e StructuralTransformation of the PublicSphere (Cambridge Polity 19891

21 G arnham Public service versusthe market p 120

22 Ibid pp 106-7

and libertarian arguments which they needed to meet and challengethe powerful libertarian arguments of the marketeers."

T h e n e o -H a b e rm a s i a n d e f e n c e o f p u b l i c s e rv i c e b ro a d c a s t i n gGarnham took Habermas's notion of the public sphere11 from a briefessay (originally an encyclopaedia article) first published in Englishin 1974 in New German Critique (and later reprinted in Mattelartand Siegelaub, the source which Garnham cited).19 Habermas'sbook, Strukturwandel der Offenthchkeit, was first published inGerman in 1962 (a translation was published in the UK in 1989),20and it seems appropriate, therefore, to re-examine the ideas whichGarnham advanced a decade ago by reference to a fuller version ofHabermas's arguments than that available in the seven page essayon which Garnham drew.

Garnham argued that contemporary emphases on market, ratherthan public service, mechanisms for the organization of broadcastingwere inimical to the puiblic interest. For, he claimed, public serviceprinciples of organization are superiorto the market as a means of providing all citizens, whatever theirwealth or geographical location, equal access to a wide range ofhigh-quality entertainment, information and education, and as ameans of ensuring that the aim of the programme producer is thesatisfaction of a range of audience tastes rather than only thosetastes that show the largest profit.21

In contrast, the market led to diminished diversity, to a reduction inthe number of enterprises which control (or at least very stronglyinfluence) the production and circulation of information and culture,and to inequitable relationships between dominant, metropolitanenterprises and subordinate, peripheral entities. These marketdriven inequities in turn sustained pervasive and deep rooted socialinequality which technological change promised, contrary to thelibertarian and hbratory rhetoric of its advocates, to accelerate.However, Garnham also argued, persuasively, that the prevailingState/Market conceptual dualism had stultified debate. He thereforecalled for a third term, 'the public sphere', so as to escape thatsterile antinomy, and to identify a 'space for a rational anduniversahstic politics distinct from both the economy and theState' a The term 'public sphere' was explicitly borrowed fromHabermas but the triadic system which Garnham proposed is acommon twentieth-century intellectual trope. Toennies, for example,saw three realms (markets, states and public opinion), andAlthussenan Marxists have also adopted a triadic model, with the

political, the economic and the ideological making up the socialwhole. Garnham was not simply expressing a preference for threes

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23 See for example Keane Th eMedia and Democracy

24 An answer ofte n given in the UKand other western Europeancountries is via the licence fee'However licence fees are simplya tax land a particularlyregressive tax) under anothername

25 Keane The Media andDemocracy See alsoP Scannell s review in MediaCulture and Society, vol 14,no 2 11932)

26 Habermas The StructuralTransformation of the PublicSphere pp 170-1

rather than twos, or for an abstract third categorical fieldintellectually distinct from the terms 'stat e' and 'mark et' He wasadvocating what he, and others, have designated the institutionalembodiment and guarantor of the modern public sphere: publicservice broadcasting.23 Public service broadcasting is, Garnhamargued, an institutional practice which mediates between politicaland corporate control and is bound neither by the imperatives ofprofit maximization nor by the maximization of political powerSeveral problems arise from this First, whilst a third termconceptually mediating between state and market may beintellectually productive and correspond to a distinctive ethos in (atleast some) broadcasting institutions at (some) moments in history,the notion of the public sphere helps only to a limited extent whenconcrete questions of broadcasting policy and organization arise Forhow is broadcasting to be funded if not by either the state or themarket?24 How are broadcasters and broadcasting institutions to beresponsive to their users if not via the institutions of state andmarket? The difficulties of concretizing an autonomous public spheredoubtless explain why (as reviewers have remarked) Keane's treatisehas so few specific recommendations for institutional change.25Second, the grounding of arguments for public servicebroadcasting in Habermas's work is curious Habermas'sStruktunvandel der Offenthchkeit may have been written in a societywhere broadcasting services were provided by perhaps the mostperfect form of public service broadcasting yet institutionalized, butit mentions broadcasting hardly at all. When Habermas does refer tobroadcasting he does so with something close to complete disdain,and unequivocally asserts the inferiority of the audiovisual media toprint media as a basis of rational understanding and democraticexchange:

Radio, film and television by degrees reduce to a minimum thedistance that a reader is forced to maintain toward the printedletter - a distance that required the privacy of the appropriationas much as it made possible the publicity of a rational-criticalexchange about what had been read. With the arrival of the newmedia the form of communication as such has changed, they havehad an impact, therefore, more penetrating (in the strict sense ofthe word) than was ever possible for the press Under thepressure of the 'Don't talk back!' the conduct of the publicassumes a different form. In comparison with printedcommunications the programs sent by the new media curtail thereactions of their recipients in a peculiar way. They draw the eyesand ears of the public under their spell but at the same time, bytaking away its distance, place it under 'tutelage', which is to saythey deprive it of the opportunity to say something and todisagree.28

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27 For an excellent historicallygrounded critique seeM Schudson Was there ever apublic sphere9 It so when7 inCalhoun Habermas and thePublic Sphere

28 H Marcuse One DimensionalMa n (1964| (London Abacus19721 p 70

29 Gamham The media and thepublic sphere p 361

30 N Fraser Rethinkin g the publicsphere a contribution to thecritique of actually existingdemocracy in CalhounHaberma s and the Public Sph erep 110

Unpromising ground on which to construct a defence of publicservice broadcasting1 Moreover, there are problems withHabermas's starting point, notably with his contention that therewas once a golden age when a public sphere, a forum for debate,exchange and rational collective decision making existed - none ofthe historically concrete candidates (the Athenian agora, theEngland of the bourgeois coffee shop, the New England townmeeting) seem particularly convincing.27 Rather as Marcusesentimentalized nature (and anathematized modernity) in hiscomparison of "love making in a meadow and in an automobile, ona lovers' walk outside the town walls and on a Manhattan street'28so Habermas sentimentalizes the coffee house, and even if we wereto put this to one side, the economic base of the eighteenth-centurycoffee house (or even the twentieth-century Cafe Laumer), is notgenerahzable to the twentieth-century mass media. PreciselyHabermas's point, but one which has not been sufficientlyrecognized by the neo-Habermasians who, in spite of their pertinentrecognition of the 'problem raised by all forms of mediatedcommunication, namely, how are the material resources necessaryfor that communication made available and to whom?'29 still invokepublic service broadcasting as a mediation between the jungle of themarket and the tyranny of the state without showing how it can beindependently fundedFraser's designation of the idea of the public sphere as a'conceptual resource'30 identifies a more promising basis for anappropriation of Habermas by proponents of nonmarketbroadcasting (and one more in keeping with the fundamentallydeductive conceptual strategies of the British neo-Habermasians).But there are limits to the power even of 'conceptual resources'.

31 H -G Falkenberg No futu re' Afew thoughts on public servicebroadcasting in the FederalRepublic of Germany MediaCulture and Society vol 5no 3/4(19831 p 235

32 See R Collins and V PorterWDH and the ArbeiterflmILondon BFI 19811

33 Habermas The StructuralTransformation of the PublicSphere p 6

B ro a d c a s t i n g a n d t h e p u b l i c s p h e reThe difficulties of institutionalizing a broadcasting public sphere isclearly demonstrated by the case of Habermas's Germany, in whicha broadcasting system was established on unequivocally publicservice lines and in 'conditions that were immensely favourable toan independent public broadcasting system'.31 The GermanConstitutional Court has thus held that there can be no involvementby the federal state in the organization of broadcasting, and that allsignificant social groups should participate in its governance, and yetpolitical parties have still been able to shape broadcating to servetheir, rather than the public's, interest.32 Indeed Habermas'setymological discussion of the terms 'public' and 'private' showshow intimately connected were the German concepts of 'public' and'political authority'. As he states, ' "lordly" and "publicus" wereused synonymously, "publicare" meant to claim for the lord'.33

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34 Tracey 'Our better angelsP 21

35 In 1985 RAI s share of the Italianprime time audience was17 44% and Fininvests(Berlusconil 50% in 1989 RAIhad a prime time share of49 09% and Fminvest 31 08%See M Fichera The new serfconfidence in public servicebroadcasting in Italy, EuropeanBroadcasting Union Review, vol40, no 3 119891. pp 22-3


European public service broadcasters' commitment to a publicsphere has, then, been Janus-faced Their commitment to informingand educating their public has too often led them to serve anaudience of their own imagination. Rather than a democratic publicsphere, in which the actual experience and interest of a realempirical public is represented, they have addressed the experienceand interests, the public sphere, of elites European public servicebroadcasting was a 'top down' broadcasting service. It constructedan idealized and reified public, to which it represented a publicsphere of broadcasters' imagination. 'Bottom up' services, whichgave voice to a real public (or, to use Reith's term, publics), andrepresented a demotic and genuinely democratic public sphere wereconspicuous by their absence

It can further be noted that whilst public service broadcasting mayhave embodied (but not in all jurisdictions and at all times) agenuine third way between state and market, it has not established agenuine public sphere, nor are the established structures of publicservice broadcasting necessarily best fitted to the realization of somefuture public sphere It is difficult to reconcile Garn ham 's claims forthe success of public service broadcasting in satisfying audiencetastes with the dramatic loss of audience experienced by Europeanpublic service broadcasters when they lost their national monopoliesand faced commercial competition.

Indeed, what Tracey calls public service broadcasting's recognitionof 'the public as audience'34 did not come about spontaneously butthrough competition with commercial broadcasting, through, that is,public service broadcasting in and with the market As MassimoFichera (formerly a Vice President of RAI and latterly ChiefExecutive of Euronews) has stated, RAI won back its audience andachieved 'a fruitful balance between m arket forces and publicservice requirements' through, and not in spite of, its competitionwith Berlusconi.36

Here too Habe rmas's etymological discussion is useful He pointsout that just as 'public' and 'lordly', the public sphere and the state,were irrevocably intertwined, so too the cultural manifestation of theemergent public sphere, a growing 'representative publicness", hadits roots in the culture of both the nobility and the bourgeoisie. Theculture of the emergent public sphere was an elite culture (albeitrooted in the tastes and experience of the new as well as the oldupper classes); if the 'humanistically cultivated courtier replaced theChristian knight' little change is likely to have been apparent tothose enjoying membership of neither courtly nor merchant classes.36The common man was not the same as the educated man and theculture of the 'public' was not that of the 'mass' The only way ofmaking it so was (as Matthew Arnold enjoined) through education,a role which public service broadcasting has customarily performedand which has left it vulnerable to demotic and democratic critique

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37 Z Bauman Intimations of Post-Modernity ILondon Routledge19921 p 217

38 Garnham Public service versusthe market p 121

39 H abermas The public spherep 51

Ibid p 49

41 See Thomas McCarthy sintroduction to Habermas Th eStructural Transformation of thePublic Sphere p xi

and to loss of audiences, thus compromising its legitimacy,particularly when alternative services have been available.Bauman has argued that Habermas describes a 'society shapedafter the pattern of a sociology seminar, that is, that there are onlyparticipants and the one thing that matters is the power ofargument'.37 No more than life is broadcasting reducible to thecondition of a sociology seminar and it was the earnest attempts ofEuropean public service broadcasters to shape broadcasting to acondition of a seminar that gave their competitors the opportunity tooffer viewers a more demotic and carnivalesque programme diet, totempt audiences away from the seminar to the funfair.In 'Public service versus the market', Garnham identified thepublic and private spheres as antithetical, and argued that theprivate sphere is expanding at the expense of the public sphere as'commodity exchange invades wider and wider areas of social life'.*For Garnham what differentiates the private and public spheres isownership. The pnvate sphere is a sphere of private ownershipwhere the privileged have appropriated discursive space which wasformerly public. This line of argument suggests that discursive spaceis a finite resource, over which private and public spheres compete,and that the growth of the private sphere is analogous to the privateenclosure of common land. But Habermas contends that thehistorical expansion of the private sphere was liberating, as activitieswhich had once been part of the public sphere were privatized, andthe domain of personal autonomy increased. For Habermas thesecularization of society, whereby religion became a private matter,was a powerful instance of the desirability of the appropriation ofthe public sphere by the private.39For Habermas, then, the privatization of society was the meanswhereby a public sphere came into existence: 'The bourgeois publicsphere could be understood as the sphere of private individualsassembled into a public body', and he suggests explicitly that'Today, newspapers and magazines, radio and television are themedia of the public sphere.'* However, he does not specify thatpublic ownership of the media is necessary to (or pnvate ownershipincompatible with) a well functioning public sphere. Indeed, heapparently believes that 'the liberal public sphere took shape in thespecific historical circumstances of a developing market economy'.41The suggestions that the privatization of the public sphere waspositive, that a public sphere might be delivered by the market andpnvately owned institutions, have evoked few sympathetic echoesfrom British neo-Habermasians Keane, for exam ple, emphaticallyrejects libertarian claims that organization of the media (includingbroadcasting) on a market basis extends freedom, arguing that'liberty and equality are unsafe' in market liberalism, that publicservice media and market liberalism are inimical and that, therefore,public service media 'should attempt to counter head-on the market

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42 Keane The Media andDemocracy. pp 124 182

43 G Murdock Redrawing the mapof the communication industriesconcentration and ownership inthe era of privatization inM Ferguson led ) PublicCommunication The Ne wImperatives ILondon Sage19901 p 2

liberal strategy of the free market guided by the tough state'.42 ForKeane the history of the media is not one of whiggish progressivismbut one of oligarchy camouflaged under a rhetorical frosting oflibertarianism. Murdock suggests similarly that 'technological changeand privatization policies are creating massive communicationconglomerates with an unrivalled capacity to shape the symbolicenvironment which we all inhabit', and, in consequence, 'anessential resource for developing and deepening democracy' is beingdenied to media users.43

The obvious importance of these rival claims concerning privateand public media demands that they be tested both empirically andtheoretically. Are there actual instances of the public spheredelivered by pnvately owned institutions? And if not is their absencenecessary or contingent? Could a public sphere delivered by themarket and privately owned institutions exist in differentcircumstances? Pnma facie instances of a market public sphere (thepossibility theoretically established by Haberm as) can be found TheUK's elite national press, for example, comprises five dailynewspapers each owned by a different corporation and each ofwhich has a distinctive political position (albeit, of course, within theframework of the UK's parliamentary democracy and capitalisteconomy). But it is certainly more difficult to identify a comparablecase in broadcasting. An obvious candidate is the UK ITV system inits pre-1990 Broadcasting Act form; but this example need not delayus too long, for the ITV system was very highly regulated and builtaround a system of monopolies. Certainly it was privately owned(and very profitable for its dominant members), but it satisifed fewof the criteria which neoclassical economists have defined ascharacteristic of a well functioning competitive market

We have inherited a debate structured around three nodes, thestate, the market and a third term, the public sphere/public servicebroadcasting, all of which are complex and around none of which isthere any clear consensus as to what is meant by them. Still less isthere agreement as to how the institutions to which the terms referare to be evaluated What is clear is that the major participants inthe debate share a common goal for broadcasting policy; theincrease of human liberty Where they differ is in their allegiance todifferent institutional and organizational means through which thedesired end is to be secured

Free d o m t o a n d f re e d o m f ro mEstablished institutional interests and their ideological shield bearershave for too long sought to deny the strengths in their opponents'position and the weaknesses in their own. A more productive way tomove the theoretical debate forward (I am not so starry-eyed as to2 5 2 Screen 34 3 Autumn 1993 Collins Public service versus the market ten years on


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I Berlin four Essays on Liberty(Oxford Oxford University Press19691

45 Ibid pp 121-2

46 Ibid pp 130-1

47 I Kant What isenlightenment 7 in Foundationsof the Metaphysics of Morals11784) llndia napo lis BobbsMer rill 19591 p 85 SeeHabermas The StructuralTransformation of trie PublicSphere p 104

41 Berlin Four Essays on Libertyp 124

49 Ibid pp 132-3

believe that there is very much likelihood of changes in academicdiscourse m aking any difference to how the cham pions ofinstitutional interests and their attendant squires will make policy)may be to recognize that while proponents of both market andpublic service structures are concerned to realize a common goal,freedom, one side invokes what Berlin called positive freedom andthe other side invokes what he called negative freedom.44Berlin defines negative freedom (or liberty) as 'The area withinwhich the subject . . is left to do or be what he [sic] is able to door be, without interference by other persons', whereas positivefreedom (or liberty) is 'the source of control or interference that candetermine someone to do, or be, this rather than that'. The extentof negative freedom depends on 'how many choices are open to me(though the method of counting these can never be more thanimpressionistic)'. The extent of positive freedom ('the wish on thepart of the individual to be his own master') is not in principlelimited by others but is dependent on the power of an individual (or

group) to achieve goals which only her or his (or a group's) ownincapacity (rather than duress exercised by others), would preventher/him (them) from achieving.46 Berlin's argument here isfundamentally Kantian and is based on Kant's recognition thathumans were disabled by their own incapacities (from which theycould be emancipated by other humans) as well as by the duressimposed upon them.Kant stated (in a passage cited by Habermas) thatEnlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage.Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understandingwithout direction from another Self-incurred is this tutelage whenits cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution andcourage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude!'Have courage to use your own reason!' - that is the motto ofenlightenment47

Thus, Kant argued, social action and social solidarity are necessaryto realize what Berlin termed positive freedom. Moreover, becausehumans are interdependent, the freedom of one is dependent on themanner and degree of the exercise of the freedom of the other'freedom for the pike is death for the minnows', as Berlin put it *And Berlin shows how the well intentioned exercise of positivefreedom by a group on behalf of its members, the coercion of 'menin the name of some goal (let us say, justice or public health) whichthey would, if they were more enlightened, themselves pursue' mayalso become despotic * Yet although there is a potential danger ofdespotism in the exercise of positive freedom this will not necessarilybe the case. The exercise of positive freedom cannot be devalued inrelation to negative freedom because of a potential danger of harmNor can the exercise of negative freedom be disqualified on the

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tad.pp 148 160

51 Articl e 19 of the UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights andArticle 10 of the EuropeanConvention on Human Rights forexample, enshrine importantaspects of negativecomm unication freedoms So toodoes the Treaty of Rome fromwhich the CompetitionDirectorate of the EuropeanCommunity derives its powersFor further discussion ofEuropean broadcasting policy seeR Collins. In dubious conflict -DG IV and the EBU'. MediaPolicy Review, no 3 (1332)


53 Ibid See also Kant 'What isenlightenment?. p 38

grounds that it actually (or potentially) harms the capacity toexercise positive freedom. For if negative freedom is subordinated topositive freedom then 'Liberty, so far from being incompatible withauthority, becomes virtually identical with it', or, put another way,'sovereignty of the people could easily destroy that of individuals'.50There can be no doubt that the re-regulation of Europeanbroadcasting during the last decade (notably through the European

Community's Television without Frontiers Directive, the successiveactions of the Competition Directorate of the Commission of theEuropean Communities DG IV, and the Council of Europe'sConvention on Transfrontier Television) has significantly extended'negative freedom'. Viewers have access to more services,broadcasters have more ready access to programme rights, andproducers have better access to more markets than ever before. Andin contrast to the embattled European bearers of positive freedom inbroadcasting - the public service broadcasters - negative freedomsare 'guaranteed' (in so far as agreements can guarantee anything) ina variety of declarations and treaties.51

If the introduction of new services has led to important increasesin viewers' and listeners' 'negative freedom', it has not significantlyimproved the responsiveness of broadcasting to its consumers, nordone much to extend positive freedom, and the bearers of 'positivefreedom' in broadcasting, the public service broadcasters, areincreasingly embattled. Proponents of public service broadcastingmay be right to insist on the inadequacy of a broadcasting orderbased on the institutions and doctrines of negative freedom, but thedangers inherent in a regime of positive freedom are no less serious.

T u t e l a g eHabermas writes that 'Liberation from self-incurred tutelage meantenlightenment. With regard to the individual, this denoted asubjective maxim, namely; to think for oneself . . . enlightenmenthad to be mediated by the public sphere'.52 Here Habermas clearlyoffers a foothold for proponents of public service broadcasting, but afoothold provided by Kant. Citing Kant's 'What is enlightenment?',Habermas argues that 'For any single individual to work himself outof the life under tutelage which has become almost his nature is verydifficult'.53 Clearly proponents of public service broadcasting (fromReith through Pilkington to the neo-Habermasians) have seen it as amediating institution, in the public sphere, which assists individualsto work themselves out of 'tutelage'.However, Habermas does not cite other sections of 'What isenlightenment?'. Kant also states that:

Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a portion ofmankind, after nature has long since discharged them from

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54 Kant What is enlightenment'p 85

55 Habermas The StructuralTransformation of trie PublicSphere p 165

56 Pilkington Report para 408

external direction (naturaliter maiorennes), nevertheless remainsunder lifelong tutelage, and why it is so easy for others to setthemselves up as their guardians It is so easy not to be of age. IfI have a book which understands for me, a pastor who has aconscience for me, a physician who decides my diet, and so forth,I need not trouble myself. I need not think, if I can only pay -others will readily undertake the irksome work for me.54This passage has the authentic smack of Kant's earnest Prussianpietism. It affords little space for fun, diversion or the seductions ofbeing not of age, but stands as a powerful rationale for benevolentsocial action. The Arnoldian statements of the Directors General ofthe BBC cited earlier thus fit the Kantian model very well (andthere are ominous signs that what has come to be called Birt's'Himalayan Strategy' - moving the BBC onto the cultural highground - will do the same) Both the Arnoldian and Kantianapproaches rest on the contradiction which lies at the centre ofpublic service broadcasting's emancipatory project. It emancipateson the terms set by the broadcasting elites, rather than on terms setby the community as a whole. For as authentic an element of thecore belief system of public service broadcasting as its emancipatorycommitment is its disdain for popular taste. As Habermas states:

mass culture has earned its rather dubious name precisely byachieving increased sales by adapting to the need for relaxationand entertainment on the part of consumer strata with relativelylittle education, rather than through the guidance of an enlargedpublic toward the appreciation of a culture undamaged in itssubstance.55It is easy to see commercial broadcasting as embodying Kant's visionof being not of age, as immersion in a 'book which understands forme'. But we may also see public service broadcasting as an agencythrough which, willingly, man embraces his tutelage. What moreclearly than Pilkington's account of broadcasting exemplifies Kant'snotion of 'a pastor who has a conscience for me, a physician whodecides my diet'? Pilkington referred to

the Governors' and Mem bers' concern . . to represent andsecure the public interest in broadcasting. It is for them to judgewhat the public interest is, and it is for this that they areanswerable. They must not do so by assessing the balance ofopinion on this or that element of programme content, and thenadopting the majority view as their own; for as we have alreadynoted, this would be to mistake 'what the public wants' in themisleading sense implied when the phrase is used as a slogan - forthe public interest.*Habermas's locution, 'through the guidance of an enlarged publictoward the appreciation of a culture undamaged in its substance'.

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refers, similarly, not to a relationship of equals but to aPilkingtonian guidance of consumers by guardians away from whatHabermas calls 'consumption ready' cultural goods to 'serious

5 7 H a b e r m a s T h e s t r u c t u r a l involvement with culture'.57 And here is the crux of the problemiransfomauorotthe^c a b o u t b h c s e r v | c e broadcasting enlightenment, the maximizationSphere p 166 v

of positive freedom, requires social action and liberation fromignorance ('self-incurred tutelage'), but to think for oneself is tothink unconstrained by authority, to be emancipated from arepressive pedagogy Audiences' rejection of public servicebroadcasters' offerings cannot be repudiated on the grounds thatviewers are not thinking for themselves or are acting under duresseven if such rejections are judged as a refusal to be freed from self-incurred tutelage The contradiction can only be surmounted ifaudiences voluntarily adopt the emancipation (putatively) offered bypublic service broadcasters. Often they do not, and the crisis ofEuropean public service broadcasting is a crisis which has becomeinsistently visible as a consequence of the rapid increase of choiceand competition. But we cannot assume that the crisis is caused bythese circumstances. Proponents of public service broadcastingconfront an unresolved problem: how to reconcile their commitmentto democracy and emancipation (a public sphere) with theauthoritarian nature of broadcasting systems grounded in Kantian(and Arnoldian) doctrines of emancipation from tutelage.

T h e p u b l i c s e rv i c e v e rs u s the m a r k e t d e b a teThe perhaps excessively 'theoretical' character of discussion oftutelage above can readily be translated into a concrete mapping ofthe terrain over which the debate between proponents of publicservice broadcasting and proponents of the market has flowed.Market theorists argue that 'political markets' are fixed by elites andthat 'free' market mechanisms at last free individual consumers torealize their right to express their preferences to suppliers throughthe price system. Public service advocates argue that the marketmodel of equal and atomized market actors simply camouflages astriking disparity in power between corporate persons and humanbeings. It is easy enough for commentators on both sides to imputebad faith to their interlocutors.

What is lacking in such arguments is proper evidence. Critics ofthe market organization of broadcasting, for example, argue that themarket undersupplies programming to economically powerlessviewers (the undersupply of children's programming is the moststriking case) and claim that competition institutes a 'Gresham'sLaw' in programming whereby vulnerable enterprises, in order tosurvive, screen programmes which are attractive to viewers butundesirable for reasons of public policy. Thus Hoffman-Riem states

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St W Hoffman-Riem Defendingvulnerable values regulatorymeasures an d enforcementdilemmas in J BlumlerTelevision and the PublicInterest Vulnerable Values mWest European BroadcastingILondon Sage 19921 p 189

59 See R Cathcart The MostContrary Region The BBC inNorthern Ireland 1924-1984(Belfast Blackstaff 1984)

GO N Gamham Editorial MediaCulture and Society vol 5 no 1(19831

that 'The more heated the battle for ratings, the smaller the chancefor the observance of the corresponding duties'.*Empirical work to test Hoffman-Riem's proposition might yieldinteresting results. Intuitively his argument seems plausible, butstriking exceptions spring to mind. Competition in broadcasting cangive voice to those who have hitherto been silent: witness thesignificant rise in television's representation of the experience andcircumstances of Northern Ireland's Catholic minority after theintroduction of commercial television to the Province - commercialtelevision had a financial incentive to secure an audience from theCatholic population which had formerly been underrepresented bythe BBC monopoly.M Moreover libertarians might argue that theeffect of such competition (if we grant Hoffman-Riem's contention)is in fact desirable in that it pushes back the boundaries of statecensorship and control of viewers' access to information. Onlybroadcasters threatened by economic circumstances will be desperateenough to challenge state power and extend the boundaries of freeexpression. A consensus on the appropriateness of the duties vestedin broadcasters by political authorities cannot be taken for granted.Garnham's influential Screen article of a decade ago framed the keyquestion in the determination of broadcasting policy as 'Publicservice or the market' The power of this conceptual dualismremains apparent for example, the major contemporary institutionalconflict in European broadcasting (between the EuropeanBroadcasting Union and the Competition Directorate of theCommission of the European Communities) can very easily bemapped o nto this antithesis Yet although the re is a clear adversariallevel at which these conflicts are played out (such as in theinstitutional rivalry between public service incumbents and newcommercial rivals - (RA1 versus Berlusconi, the ARD/ZDF versusRTL+, NOS versus RTL4, Antenne 2/FR 3 versus Canal Plus andTF1, and so on), it is less clear that there is a necessaryirreconcilability between public service and market principlesIn a second article published in 1983 Garnham argued strongly forthe superior power of Critical Theory to the prevailing UK leftistorthodoxy of Althusserian Marxism.60 It is hard to disagree Thesubsequent influence of Habermas's writings (I am tempted to say'writing') on the academic debate on broadcasting policy in Britaintestifies both to the accuracy of Garnham's judgement and to theinfluence of his Screen article. The rationale for Garnham'sadvocacy of Habermas's concept of the public sphere was that itprovided a libertarian basis for advocates of public servicebroadcasting. But its use has also reconfirmed some of the 'profoundweaknesses in the analytical tools available within British mediastudies' which Garnham had originally identified, most notably thecultural elitism which has left public service broadcasting sovulnerable to populist critique and competition.

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Keane does recognize the deficiencies of public servicebroadcasting in this respect, and states that 'Public service mediacorset audiences and violate their own principle of equality of accessfor all to entertainment, current affairs and cultural resources in a

6 i K e a n e T h e M e d i a a n d common public domain'.11 But Keane's genuflection to the demoticD e m o c r a c y P P 1 2 2 - 3 d o e s n o t | e a d n i m t o refuse t n e dualistic problematic of 'publicservice versus the market' within which his challenging discussion ofthe media and democracy remains. It is a sad irony that the poor, inwhose name so many of the critiques of market allocations inbroadcasting are being made, are disproportionately representedamong the subscribers to pay-TV. If public service broadcasting wasgiving the C2 and D social groups what they wanted why would theypay for BSkyB?

UK scholars' selection from the Habermasian inheritance hasbeen very particular and rather unfortunate. From an admittedlycontradictory patrimony has been taken the notion of the publicsphere and its prioritization of political discourse (inform andeducate); what has not been taken is any recognition of the positiverole of commercial media. This is to retain the public service versusmarket antithesis which has not helped proponents of public servicebroadcasting either to rebut, or to integrate into a theoreticalsynthesis friendly to their cause, market theorists' compellingcritique of public service broadcasting for its susceptibility to elitecapture, its waste of resources, and its tendency to lose contact withthe needs and desires of its audiences.

This is not to pass over the well-founded complementary critiqueby advocates of public service broadcasting of broadcasting markets,which equally clearly lend themselves to the capture of broadcastinginstitutions by corporate power, to an undersupply of programmingto economically and politically disempowered audiences, and to thereduction of aggregate welfare through use of the price system toexclude consumers from access to broadcasting services. My point is,rather, that the binary structure of the debate, public service versusthe market, has inhibited a recognition that there are two types offreedom, that broadcasting policy should be directed towards themaximization of both positive and negative freedom and that a morefruitful approach to policy analysis may be to constitute publicservice and the market as non-exclusive categories. And thus to seeka broadcasting policy which maximizes their complementarities andrecognizes that each organizing principle may be necessary butneither is sufficient for the realization of public policy goals

Clearly the policy conclusion is that a system which combines bothpositive and negative freedoms is required. The historical evidencesuggests that such a system exists neither in circumstances wherepublic service broadcasting has a monopoly nor in circumstanceswhere commercial broadcasting, is overwhelmingly dominant Amixed system is required This may seem an underwhelming

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conclusion but it is not one which can be derived from thearguments of either the neo-Habermasians or the market theoristsIt is to an analysis of the many different kinds of mixed b roadcastingsystems that the study of broadcasting policy and institutions shouldnow turn Rather than continuing to rehearse a sterile debate weshould consider how the libertanan goals espoused in the last decadeby proponents of both public service and market principles ofbroadcasting can best be realized Both the values - notably theconcept of freedom - and the methods - notably its dialectical andiconoclastic character - of Critical Theory will be central to thisprojectThe research on wh ich th is paper wa s based w as fun ded by ESRC awa rd num ber ROOO23 2159 The support of th e ESRCis gratefully acknowledged

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