新竹市風城社區大學
新竹市風城、香山、青草湖社區大學，
[知性旅遊]公共媒體深度體驗：公共電視台之旅，2004/04/24參訪
[社大英語課程閱讀資料]
2004/04/22
What is the special meaning for our visit to Public Television Service (PTS)? Why do we want to visit PTS rather other television services? Does commercial television differ from public television? Many of you may have these questions in mind. Let us first do a simple calculation of how many times you turn you remote control to public television channel, and what programs do you usually watch? When people ask you about your feeling toward public television program, what is your reaction? What programs do you first think of? Or we may ask ourselves this question—What does public television's "public" mean? Do you really feel that this television services is really "public" ?
Public television is an ideal because broadcasting is very important to human activity. To be able to broadcast freely is a kind of power to be protected. Therefore, the ideal of public television drives the services toward this goal. Whenever we criticize how the wealthy consortium gets hold of the media, and ferocious business competition leads to homogenization of the programs, public television symbolizes the defending of the dream in free information broadcasting. Nevertheless, the more idealized the goal is the more difficult to put the ideal into practice, for example: How to do we put into practice the ideal of being "public" in actual institution?
We provide a few ways in looking at this problem.
The Law of Public Television is the origin of public television. In order to make a thing become "neutral" legally, we must examine various limitations in the article, such as how the board of directors come about? What is the monitoring mechanism of public television? What is the superior unit for public television legally?
The meaning of "public" connotes that it is neither private nor state-owned, and it belongs to all people. Therefore, it must be independent financially, cannot rely on state subsidization nor become a private profit-making media. Public Televisions pronounces itself as a non-profit organization; however, a sound independent public media is not in deficit every year. This shows that in order to become a successful public television, it must secure its financial stability. The second criterion here to examine public television is to see if it can be independent financially, can it decide its own budget?
Organization directs toward the make-up of public television leading management team. Is the organizational process of this team open, transparent, and fair? Does the team routine operation accept different public opinions? Does the formation of policy possess legitimacy?
Does the public television management ideal conform to the meaning of "public" ? We have to be especially careful that management ideal is not only examined from public propagation, but also from daily programs and the attitudes of the management leader.
The aspect of program production and its content is the most concrete way to examine if public television is truly "public's" television. We can compare the content of public television production with other commercial television's to find out the difference.
These five aspects provide helpful ways in observing public television. When you start to appreciate the "public's" public television, you will find the beauty of it. Let us create together a better media environment.