At the 3rd International Radio Meeting in Mexico City (4-6 May), organised by Radio Netherlands with Mexican partners, Director-General Jan Hoek set out in a speech how he sees the role of the European public broadcasters.
Here are extracts from his speech:
“Our public media is under increasing pressure from commercial competitors. Some large commercial radio and TV networks feel there is no-longer a place for public-financed media. Their lawyers and lobbyists believe that public broadcasting should be marginalized so that it only serves an elite.
I disagree. Commercial broadcasting is primarily interested in the consumer, and only those consumers that have purchasing power. Public broadcasting, if it is doing its job, should be to the benefit of the citizen.
It is the job of public media, and Radio Netherlands in particular, to help citizens to understand our complex world. We think there are aspects of life in Europe, which are of interest to people all over Latin America. But we also believe that many of the issues that you are currently facing with integration, national identity and freedom of speech are very relevant to Europeans.
We have a long way to go. Most Europeans know more about the daily life of movie stars in Hollywood than they do about the culture of neighbouring countries. Yet, we can also see that communities that become isolated from the outside world and society very quickly radicalize. These days, radicalization is quickly linked to extremism, terror and intolerance. There are too many recent examples in Europe and Latin America where people, many of whom are from the media, have given their lives because they said what they believed.
In Europe, we live with several paradoxes. We have become global witnesses and voyeurs to politics, everyday life, disasters and catastrophes. But we do not have an adequate European forum, in which this new European experience can be debated in a proper democratic way.
There is still a huge and growing imbalance in the information flow between North & South, and especially East and West. It is too easy to get lost in a sea of sound bites and uncut press conferences. There may be content, but there is little discussion of context. Again, television, but particularly radio has an important role to stimulate sensible debate, especially when the interests of the citizen do not run parallel with commercial interests. No country has prospered where the media is smothered by the government or filtered by purely commercial interests.
At Radio Netherlands, we spend a lot of time and effort following the emerging democracies in Latin America. Even a small country can act as a catalyst for a discussion; putting issues on the table that larger countries either deliberately ignore or dont think have mass appeal.
We must recognise that media has a social responsibility, as well as being there to please our stock-holders or stake-holders. All of us here in this room have an enormous power to influence public opinion. And we must use it to search for balance, being critical when things go wrong, but also constructive to show that there are alternatives to a spiralling circle of poverty, misery, disease and maybe war.
It is very easy to be destructive. No-one can guarantee the world will be a better place. But through dialogue we can and should make the best effort to try.”