Public Media

After today's lecture on public media, I appreciate the public media's 'major players', such as ABC and SBS, so much more for their effort in bringing the Australian public engaging news and entertainment. I've never really stopped to think about the fact that public media might operate on a separate set of guidelines than commercial media, which seems to be why their content and reliability differs. I've always been a 'news snob', and therefore I try to avoid news on commercial channels because it seems to be (coincidently) more commercialised, though I've never thought about why.
It seems that as a public service, public media is required to follow a certain criteria when broadcasting to the general masses which is as follows:

Broadcasting Research Unit 1985

In 1985 the Broadcasting Research Unit defined public service broadcasting as involving:

• Geographical universality. Broadcast programmes should be available to the whole population.
• Universality of appeal. Broadcast programmes should cater for all tastes and interests.
• There should be special provision for minorities, especially disadvantaged minorities.
• Broadcasters should recognise their special relationship to the sense of national identity and community.
• Broadcasting should be distanced from all vested interests, and in particular from those of the government of the day.
• Universality of payment. One main instrument of broadcasting should be directly funded by the corpus of users.
• Broadcasting should be structured so as to encourage competition in good programming rather than competition for numbers.
• The public guidelines for broadcasting should liberate rather than restrict broadcasters.
  (Broadcasting Research Unit 1985)

http://www.nosuch-research.co.uk/pppp.html 

In order to interest the population as a whole, these media outlets have to supply programs or content which cover certain criteria as mentioned above. This criteria must also be followed in order for these outlets' media to be classified as public media. 

Personally, I think these guidelines make ABC and SBS much better T.V. channels than commercial stations such as Ten, Seven and Nine. Their news is generally more serious, and they tend to offer a larger range of programs, especially for education, as well as provide better Australian drama's.

As public media's main goal is to serve the public rather than make money, I believe it is the most reliable source of news in Australia, and that it will remain that way.