| Abstract |
There are numerous time-honored arguments for public broadcasting. Economically, public broadcasting is conceived as a remedy for market failure, the failure to satisfy consumer preferences with broadcast programs in free markets. It is argued that the predominance of advertising influence, broadcast homogeneity as a result of free competition, and collective action problems pose insurmountable difficulties for the broadcasting market to function well according to viewers' preferences. Politically, even if they function well, free broadcast markets are deemed to fail the duty of meeting citizens' needs. A well-functioning market, working according to the audience's willingness to pay, may fail to serve certain categories of viewers such as children, the aged and the hearing-impaired. On the other hand, leaving individuals alone to choose their own basket of information from the myriad of sources in the cyberspace may lead to undesirable social outcomes. Instead of being exposed to more diverse opinions, people may turn to views similar to their own. They will be locked in their own idiosyncrasy. The purpose of mass media being a public sphere in which diverse views are exchanged and debated among citizens looking for consensus is lost. And public broadcasting must come to its rescue.
While these economic and political justifications, among others, for public broadcasting in the free market and democratic society are well grounded and argued, they should not be assumed universal. In a different cultural context, the validity of these claims is not beyond doubt. They are at best incomplete and at worst irrelevant. A more plausible account of the justifications for public broadcasting in a specific place, as this article will argue, could only be founded on the understanding of the culture and the community of the place in question. We must pay attention to the cultural values, community aspiration, sense of identity and historical legacy. For only after examining these culturally specific factors could we come up with a compelling account, which is politically fit and culturally considerate in justifying public broadcasting in a specific context. Such justifications cannot be easily borrowed from elsewhere.
This article, which is composed of three parts, will use Hong Kong as an example to demonstrate why arguments that are apparently universal are inadequate and why the above communitarian considerations must be taken into account. In part one, major justifications for public broadcasting in western democracies will be presented. The validity of these claims will be scrutinized in part two by exploring the merits and limitations of these arguments when they are applied to Hong Kong. In the third part, it will be argued that substantive support for public broadcasting, with Hong Kong as an example, must be based on the local knowledge of the various dimensions of the community concerned.
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