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MEDIA-JAMAICA: Gov't to Revive Public Broadcasting System
By Dionne Jackson Miller
MONTEGO BAY, Jul 2 (IPS) - Mindful of the problems public broadcasting is facing in other countries, and its own history of politicised programming, Jamaican authorities nonetheless have decided to restore high-quality state radio and television here.
Funding constraints and growing competition from commercial media have ignited concerns about the future of public broadcasting worldwide, to the extent that the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has been campaigning in defence of public service broadcasting for the past two years.
According to the IFJ, "in developed countries, we are already seeing low cost, low quality programming, cuts in editorial budgets and a reduction in employment rights" while in developing countries, "international financial institutions or local governments want to privatise former state broadcasters".
In the United States, Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting says that "political and economic constraints have prevented a good service from becoming excellent." The organisation adds that the "very non-commercial nature of the service has been under assault".
Despite the problems evident in other jurisdictions, the Jamaican government believes that the country needs a public broadcasting service and says it is now in the process of appointing a board for the entity.
In the process, however, the government will have to overcome scepticism about the independence and sustainability of the system, given the country's history.
In 1958, a few years prior to Jamaica's gaining political independence from Britain in 1962, the government created the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation (JBC), which included state-owned radio and television stations.
The JBC was envisioned as Jamaica's answer to the British Broadcasting Corporation and as providing an avenue for national development and expression that was lacking in the country's only existing radio station.
To a large extent, JBC did fulfill that vision, says talk show host Barbara Gloudon.
"A lot of things which we now take for granted, the call-in programmes, the discussion programmes, came out of JBC, because it came with the same spirit of the BBC àto serve the best in the society," Gloudon told Radio Jamaica in an interview.
"They were able to present concerts, art discussions, even political discussions which could be more free form and (wide) ranging without people looking over their shoulders, and the JBC started out with that sense of excitement," Gloudon said.
It is that striving for excellence that helps define public broadcasting, Claude Robinson, a senior fellow at the Mona Institute of Business at the University of the West Indies, said in an interview with Radio Jamaica.
"Public broadcasting caters to some sense of national identity and community, it is also detached from vested commercial or governmental interests, and it has to be funded through the broad body of users whether they are taxpayers or some other kind of public source," Robinson said.
"It's a competition around good programming rather than numbers, and because it does not operate for profit, it operates broadly in the public interest," Robinson said.
The major factor that separated the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation from true public broadcasting, however, was the element of political interference, said Robinson, a former director general of JBC.
"For too long, JBC was a prize of political office. Whoever (won) the election (won) JBC, and although there were financial difficulties, and difficulties with a number of issues, I think the core of it was that it never really developed that political independence in its journalism," said Robinson.
After several decades of struggle, in 1997 the government closed down JBC Radio One, and sold another television station and radio station to the JBC's original competitor, Radio Jamaica, while announcing its intention to establish a public broadcasting system.
Six years later, the government has announced that some public broadcasting programming should air by the end of the year, sparking questions about content, sustainability and whether the new entity will be able to carve out a space in the expanded media landscape.
When JBC began operations, it owned one of two radio stations and ran the country's only television station for decades.
Now there are three local television stations, scores of foreign-owned stations on cable, and a host of community cable stations. There are also over 15 radio stations.
Despite this, Claude Robinson believes there is still room for the kind of programming that a public broadcasting service could offer.
"I think there is space," Robinson said, "because while there are lots of radio stations, a number of television stations, and a large number of cable stations, I don't think we have that much diversity, there is a certain sameness on the music stations and to the talk on the information stations."
The government will also have to find a way to ensure financial sustainability, and the pathway there is far from clear at the moment.
Information Minister Burchell Whiteman told a recent press conference that the initial funding for the establishment of the public broadcasting system had been subsumed in the years since the establishment of the service was announced.
"We are right now working on alternative funding, and I can't say too much about it, but some of it will be government funding, or coming from institutions that are government institutions but without (political) strings," Whiteman told reporters.
But the issue of financial support is crucial, Jamaica Observer columnist Ken Chaplin told IPS.
"The whole thing revolves around finance, because sometimes you find we establish such an organisation, then to continue the finances is a problem, and then the standard will fall. You will recall what happened to JBC, we set it up, things went well for a time then it began to have budgetary problems because it wasn't being supported to any great extent by the private sector, so the government had to change course and divest it," Chaplin said.
He stresses that if the service can be established and maintained, however, the public stands to benefit considerably.
"Basically, it's a good thing, because it enables the public to express a different view from the commercial stations and carry a different slant of news, whereas sometimes with private radio it's restricted, so against that background, I would say that it revolves around the amount of financing it can receive," said Chaplin, who served as press secretary to four Jamaican prime ministers before retiring several years ago.
(END/2003)
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