Public Service Broadcasting in a Post-Habermasian Public Sphere

The final speaker in this ECREA 2012 session is Peter Lunt, who notes that Habermas was initially especially attracted to the diverse and disorganised nature of the early formations of the public sphere, before the massification of the mass media. How are these institutionalised forms of mass media going to respond to the transformation of the contemporary media environment, then, which returns the mediasphere to a more complex, diverse, disorganised state, then? How can the BBC, for example, be repositioned if the excitement of where the public is has escaped from traditional institutional spaces, even online.

Traditional public service broadcasting has a range of core values (to inform, educate, entertain, for the BBC), but has also been exposed to a series of critiques from both left and right; in a changing market, it has variously been seen as too big (stifling the market) or too small (unable to innovate quickly enough); it has been seen as reconstructing the nation state, as part of the establishment, as reflecting a standard liberal consensus; it has been viewed as aligned with specific national politics; and it has been accused as stifling the civil society by privileging a particular form of progressive engagement.

Public service broadcasting has also been defended, in turn, as instantiating and defending public life in the face of the increasing power of commerce and the state; this represents a critique of Habermas's insistence of the separation of the public sphere from institutions. The debate was settled by moving the argument from authority to infrastructure: public service broadcasting remained important, but the BBC was seen only as supporting public engagement, not as containing it.

There remains a legacy problem which stems from this interpretation of Habermas, however. The original values of PSBs were reaffirmed, reasserted, and criticisms of public sphere theory as well as of public service broadcasting remained. None of this necessarily tracks how Habermas himself adjusted his theories subsequently; he increasingly recognised the impact of complexity and globalisation, for example.

At the PSB level, new initiatives to test and manage the public value contributed by public service broadcasters further complicate their role in society; this is a de facto move in the rationalisation of the value of the BBC, for example, but not an accompanying shift in the public perception of PSBs. We can no longer sustain the alignment of public service broadcasting and the public sphere.