The Importance Of Public Service Broadcasters For Canadian Democracy

Public Service broadcasters deliver important social and democratic values. Public Broadcasting is defined as “a form of electronic mass communication that is designed to serve its audience as citizens rather than as consumers”. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) - a PSB, took shape during mid 1930s and became closely associated with Canadian nationalism and culture. I believe that CBC still plays a significant role in political structure of Canada despite of various challenges such as technological change, audience fragmentation, neoliberalism, or concentration of ownership etc. , which are going to be discussed in following paragraphs.

Freedom of press is a central pillar of any democracy which states that citizens must have access to news and information. For most Canadians it is an obvious truth that production of news and current affairs programming is the single most important responsibility of their public broadcaster. CBC news organization frequently operated as an arm of government and a propaganda tool. Government tries to control media and therefore, public opinion. The news media depend upon government for information and advertising and the government in result depends upon news media to disseminate that information. This is how information and current affairs circulate in the country. In fact, CBC is the only source of news and entertainment in many remote and northern communities. For instance, now every news about statements of different political leaders is shown by CBC and it also displays polls during election times. Most of the Canadian population relies upon the content produced by CBC as shown by the result of collection of stories of 50 people by FRIENDS editorial page.

Despite being a nation serving broadcasting corporation CBC faces many challenges, among one is rise of new digital media. In our current era of social media and blogs, anyone can deliver the news. Social media have become an important source of shared news as delivered via “FRIENDS” a highly personalized editorial page. The draft toward digital, online platforms for news is more than technical interest. Their chief advantages are their number and diversity. The online news industry consists of a great deal of aggregation and repurposing of other people’s content and very little original investigative reporting. Most of the online web newspapers are sponsored by advertisers which produce ‘iterative journalism’ that is half baked stories but under the conventional method of CBC broadcasting, the whole information is originally collected and framed by various professional journalists, editors and is only posted after the approval of high authorities. Hence, citizens can rely upon the content shared and produced by CBC. The on-request highlight of electronic media administrations is helpful, however is not quite the same as bona fide broadcasting in significant manner. The Veteran Canadian TV maker Richard Nielson has recognized it as pursues 'Dissimilar to the web, broadcasting isn't tied in with providing a library to which individuals can get to. Broadcasting is intended to give a shared encounter under elevated level of genuineness and polished skill. The increasingly ambitious migration online of CBC has placed it in neck to neck competition with newspapers on web. CBC is now putting more of its resources into digital media due to shift of readers towards online media.

Another challenge which CBC incurs is the gap between the resources government is willing to provide the CBC and the mandate it is expected to carry out. Currently, CBC's primary television services are its English-language network (based in Toronto), French-language network (based in Montreal), and regional and local programming operations. Twenty-eight (16 English, 12 French) owned-and-operated stations provide the regional and local programming, contribute items to the network, and distribute the network signal locally. Harper government started the agenda of cutting funds of CBC so CBC moved to advertising revenue. CBC usually takes 1984-85 as the base year when discussing its financial situation. The figures support the contention that CBC has suffered a decline in real funding under the Conservative Government. The CBC has been successful in offsetting the decline by increasing advertising revenue and miscellaneous revenue (from program sales, sales of com pact disks etc. ). Real advertising revenue increased 83 per cent from $188. 0 million in 1981-82 to $344. 2 million in 1990-91 (as a share of total non-capital funding from less than 18 per cent to more than 28 per cent). People started arguing that CBC stopped serving its purpose and moved to commercialization but it was due to the lack of funding. Here is an evidence which shows that CBC gets overall positive results for fulfilling its mandate: 78 percent think that it has done a good job in informing, enlightening, and entertaining. The federal government must substantially increase the CBC/Radio-Canada annual parliamentary appropriation, which is currently less than $1 billion, as an investment in the nation’s democratic future.

The CBC is entirely capable of filling those public interest gaps. What the CBC needs is a sustainable, predictable level of public funding, and a management culture in which the goals of public -service broadcasting are understood and there is a willingness to achieve these goals.

References

1. Gasher, M. , Skinner, D. , & Lorimer, R. (2016). Mass communication in Canada. Oxford University Press.
2. Rowland, W. (2015). Saving the CBC: balancing profit and public service. Linda Leith Pub. Retrievedfromhttp://search. ebscohost. com/login. aspx? direct=true&db=cat06213a&AN=ccc. 298757&site=eds-live
3. FRIENDS of Canadian Broadcasting. (2018, November 1). Canadians' attitudes toward the CBC and public broadcasting in Canada. Retrieved November 11, 2019, from https://friends. ca/explore/article/canadians-attitudes-toward-the-cbc-and-public-broadcasting-in-canada/.
4. Hoskins, C. , & Mcfadyen, S. (1992). The Mandate, Structure and Financing of the CBC. Canadian Public Policy / Analyse De Politiques, 18(3), 275. doi: 10. 2307/3551812
5. FRIENDS of Canadian Broadcasting. (2019, October 23). 50 Stories for CBC! Retrieved November 11, 2019, from https://friends. ca/explore/article/50-stories-for-cbc/.