And the same is true in Africa with
South Africa the only exception.
In Latin America, the media
culture is so very different that in
our study we only looked at
community media. In Latin
America the whole concept of
public service media is quite alien
to people. In Latin America, the
media are either privately owned
and follow the interests of their
owner, or they’re state media used
by the government as propaganda
instruments. Usually it’s the
opposition that has private media
and the government has the state
media. The only in-between is this
sector of community media, and
they play an important role.
Is there anything you have learned
from these studies that can be
applied back home?
What I really learned is that public
service media is a continuous
struggle for independence, and it’s
a really long path that everybody’s
taking. For the BBC, it took a very
long time before it became what we
understand it to be today. It was
decades of journalists struggling for
independence from the government.
The same holds true in
Germany. With the second German
TV channel ZDF there have been
major issues in the past years of it
trying to become more independent
and successfully doing so.
But I’m sure there will always be
attempts by politicians to somehow
influence broadcasting. It’s a
continuous effort, and it takes
many players and stakeholders in
this process to defend this great
idea that serves us all. It takes both
journalists and politicians to accept
that there needs to be this
independent entity observing and
integrating society. And it takes an
active civil society, an active
audience to be engaged in this
media that we all somehow own.
This can be seen in the
developing countries that we
looked at. They’re at very different
stages, and they take very different
paths. And I think we have to value
the small steps that are taken and
strengthen them. Even if they seem
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very small, they can be of
importance in the long run.
So will you be doing these kinds of
studies regularly?
We’re restructuring DWAkademie
at the moment. DWAkademie has
a history of being an international
training centre for journalists. But
we’ve been shifting in the past two
years toward longer-term
development projects.
We are moving more towards
consultancy with broadcasters,
with NGOs and with people who
try to influence the legal
frameworks as well as universities,
helping them develop their
curricula. So we take a much
broader approach to media
development now. This study is
part of this new effort.
Why the change in strategy?
We have seen that journalism
training is not everything. To
support journalists and media in
developing countries, it isn’t
enough just to train them. You also
have to think about many other
issues. The question of financial
sustainability is a key issue in some
countries and you cannot solve it
by training.
As far as state broadcasters are
concerned, it’s not enough to just
go there and train journalists and
build their capacity in a craft sense,
but not change the organisation or
improve legislation. We’re building
on a lot of expertise and experience
we have gathered through training,
because we have a lot of contacts
now. But we see that we have to do
much more.
Jan Lublinski, thanks for talking to us.
THE CHANNEL
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MEDIA IN TRANSITION
Top
Functions
of public service
media subdivided
by two general
concepts:
supporting
integration and
creating a public
sphere
Below
Four key
areas of the
strategicmodel
by DWAkademie
