I’ve been wondering about this for a while. And, certainly, one of the large issues in North America is the role of corporate media in giving people accurate information, which leads to informed awareness, as opposed to partisan interpretation, spin and propaganda.
It’s not for nothing that the BBC in the UK is often referred to as “Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition”, and there is clearly a responsibility in any society to use the public airwaves for the good of the society.
Here’s an item from Boing Boing which might be an “early weak signal”. It renews my wondering about whether blogging – the interconnected swapping-and-pointing via linkage to information, facts, entertaining ideas, cartoons and satiric animations – is actually an interesting candidate for what publicly-funded television might have been.
UK Public Service Publisher: a BBC for everything else?
The UK’s Office of Communications (Ofcom) is publicly toying with the idea of funding a “public service publisher” (PSP) to complement the BBC’s role as a public service broadcaster. The idea of a PSP is to publicly fund an entity that publishes books, games, interactive material and other “published” items that are commissioned from British creators and that reflect and deliver British values.
It’s a brilliant idea, and one that’s ripe for Creative Commons licenses — the specs say that “Content distributed by the PSP must be widely available throughout the UK, with at least near-universal availability.” Sounds like open content to me! 184K PDF Link to the call for bids, Link to the Ofcom web-page for the project (via Wonderland)
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