A very large proportion of the world's media - especially radio and television - are owned by the public or the state. Three different terms are used that, in principle at least, have very different meanings:
- Public media use public money to broadcast in the interests of the public as a whole. They are not partisan towards any particular party, including the incumbent ruling party.
- State media are owned by the state (although of course the state is financed out of public money) and directly controlled by it.
- Government media are owned by the government of the day (but still using that same public money) and are controlled by the government of the day.
Two models of public/state broadcasting developed in parallel. In Western Europe most broadcast media were initially under public ownership, but usually with strict legal guarantees of independence from the government of the day. At the same time, in the Soviet Union (and later in many countries that followed its lead) was a model of broadcasting under the control of the government, directed towards achieveing the objectives of the state.
The European public service model generally functioned well in its countries of origin but did not travel well. Colonial broadcasters on the British or French model enjoyed little of the independence of their metropolitan models, based as it was more upon convention than strong legal guarantees. After independence, post-colonial governments continued in the same tradition of broadcaster-as-government-propagandist. Hence the clear distinction in principle between government and public media has been largely lost in practice.
Yet the distinction is still important. Public service broadcasting was founded on a belief that still holds true in most of the world: the private sector alone cannot guarantee pluralism in broadcasting. The trouble is that government media have largely failed to do that too. In many countries, the advent of private broadcasting has made governments even more determined to cling onto editorial control of the public broadcaster.
In some cases there have been bold attempts to retrieve and modernize the public service ideal: for example, in South Africa where since 1993 the public broadcaster has statutory independence and even, at one stage, had its board members appointed after public hearings.
Public or state media may be financed out of one or all of three main sources:
- A licence fee paid by television viewers
- The government budget.
- Commercial advertising.
In a few cases this may be supplemented by other income, such as the sale of programmes. These different revenue sources have potential implications for the broadcaster's day-to-day independence. A licence fee or commercial advertising may make it easier for the broadcaster to maintain a distance from government, although it will still depend on government mechanisms (often the postal service) to collect the fee.
Much of the discussion about 'regulation' of the media in elections - a term that creates nervousness among some freedom of expression advocates - is in fact to do with ensuring that publicly funded media operate with due independence of the government of the day, rather than trying to restrict the operations of media that already enjoy full editorial independence.
Public or government-owned media are usually broadcasters. But there are still many government-owned newspapers in existence. They do not enjoy the same economic rational as public broadcasters and often function as little more than government propaganda sheets. There are exceptions - Uganda's government paper, for example, has a reputation as a reliable and independent source of news. But often even innovative approaches to newspaper ownership end up in the same old pattern. Zimbabwe, immediately after independence, set up a Mass Media Trust to exercise public control over its main newspaper group. In practice this rapidly degenerated into direct editorial control from the Ministry of Information.41
