Let us be clear - the public broadcaster should be the public broadcaster. This means the public who form the ruling party and the democratically elected sovereign state, also pays for most of the expenses, maintenance and running costs of the public broadcaster. The public equals the taxpayer. Therefore, the public should be part of the broadcaster.
This is the case for all public broadcasters, be it the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC), the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and all other national broadcasters.
The public broadcaster also generates additional income from the private sector in the form of advertising and sponsorship.
Therefore, the public should have more say of what they really want from the public broadcaster's news, current affairs and programme content and how it should be managed. In other words, the public broadcaster would reflect the public's interest. To cover that, nationwide opinion polls are conducted.
As public broadcaster, it has a board, senior management and specialised management teams for administration, news, current affairs and sport, programme content and production for radio and television.
The ministry responsible for the public broadcaster would set up the board in broad consultation. The board would then assist with the appointment of the Group CEO, the CFO and Head: News and Current Affairs and so forth. Those positions are usually advertised in the media before they are awarded.
The above paints a basic picture of how the structures of public broadcasters work and should work.
However, this is not the case, as the public broadcaster is viewed as a major influence on public opinion. Therefore, the interests in and the structures of the public broadcaster more often than not reflect not necessarily the public's interest alone.
The public market for political opinion and consumers out there is national and regional. Political and market related interests at stake are huge.
The aforementioned attempts to explain in simple terms that all is not what it usually seems. Like dogs fighting over a juicy bone, many interests try to influence the public broadcaster to accept their agendas, however, most of them well hidden.
It starts with the board chairman and those, who invited him/her and his/her colleagues on the board. The chairman and his board take keen interest in finding the "right" GCEO and his leadership, particularly for news and current affairs and to a certain extent, also for sport. All of it should "make good business sense" and should be "cost saving".
What chairmen and boards and their GCEO usually forget, is that the public out there are not as stupid as it is assumed. It does not take much time and less genius to find out that the GCEO has never had any media, particularly broadcasting experience and neither did his head of news and current affairs and even the head of the production team.
Experienced applicants do not get a chance. Seasoned staff gets sidelined. Those practices are nothing new for public broadcasters throughout. News content and presentation come second.
It is also known, that board chairs have good political connections too, not necessarily in the public interest, but rather for their own influences to strengthen their network.
The public broadcaster is exposed to many hidden agendas. The staff and the public out there do not know and therefore, do not understand. The national footprint is attractive to those interest groups with close relationships with assumed powerful influences, who promote division and subsequent power for themselves.
In the view of the interests of the established oligarchs of cartelised economies, the public broadcaster had to be distanced from the influence of popular leaders and the ruling parties. It also had to accept the "soft power" of the mainstream corporate media and of the social media in 2012. A huge realignment drive throughout the media industry has taken place since the end of the so-called "cold war".
The propaganda war is in full swing and the tax-paying public are the victims.
It is all about influence and power mongering.
Udo Froese is an independent political and socio-economic analyst and columnist, based in Johannesburg, South Africa.
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