BY
The point of
public broadcasting, and a national public broadcaster, is one of a public
service – communicating with and engaging the citizen first and foremost.
To do so there
are obviously several prerequisites, such as being broadcast nationally and
having universal appeal across the national constituency. Ergo a public
broadcaster strives to be inclusive and reach majority and minorities alike,
assisting in the creation of a national identity and sense of common
purpose/community. Thus the guidelines for a national public broadcaster
are therefore liberating rather than restricting.
It is an entity
either directly funded by the State, and/or universal payment, (a Licence Fee),
in order to to be free of vested interests with regard to private funding.
As such its
programming would seek to be qualitative and unbiased and measured that way,
rather than by viewer numbers or advertising revenue – should there be any
advertising at all.
So much so
obvious.
One year ago, in
April 2015, President Poroshenko signed into law the creation of Ukrainian
public broadcaster and its remit. It is a broadcaster that still does not
exist as a legal entity, let along broadcast anything.
It is currently
known as A NOTE, though it may well be given a different name (officially or
otherwise) in due course.
The reason it
doesn’t exist is that the State entities that were to shelter and assimilate as
the new public broadcaster under a statutory umbrella as designated by the
April 2015 law, are being “difficult”. More precisely one of those
entities is being “difficult”. Ukrtelefilm apparently is somewhat
confused over what is public and private property, namely themselves, and
refuses to submit its documents to The National Television Company of Ukraine
as required.
Having been
identified in the statue as being an entity that will form part of this
television/radio/Internet State broadcaster, the belligerence of the management
of this entity therefore make it impossible for any State public broadcaster to
actually broadcast anything, for technically it is still not compliant with the
legislation per statutory composition.
What to do when
a State entity refuses to obey the State and the statute book?
Rather than
enforce the statute it seems there will be an amendment made, via Draft Bill
4232, to remove Ukrtelefilm from the statute that creates the State public
broadcaster. The tail wags the dog once more in yet another display of
exceptionally weak governance in the face of the slightest resistance.
Nevertheless, by
the Autumn, the tail will have wagged itself free of the State/public
broadcaster by way of statutory amendment.
Thereafter, it
will be a matter of deciding whether the State public broadcaster actually
meets the a-political and inclusive model a public broadcaster is meant to be.
Regardless of neutrally presented factual content, will there be
Ukrainian, Russian and Tatar language broadcasting (or any of the other officially
recognised minority languages) for example?
All will
undoubtedly be watching for the current political leadership (or any subsequent
government of the day) “meddling” with the content, but it will be equally as
interesting to see whether the national and/or regional media outlets owned by
every self-respecting (if not publicly respected) old guard elites decide to
collectively attack the new public broadcaster when the owners interests are
challenged on or by the State public broadcaster.
Time will tell
whether the Ukrainian public broadcaster will be all quality signal as expected
from such an entity, or if it will also contain a lot of unacceptable noise
through “meddling”. As of today however, there is no public broadcasting
at all – a full 12 months after a public broadcaster was created by statute.
Thus far, not a note from A NOTE – not even the annoying noise from
having no signal whatsoever.
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