Discuss the part broadcasting and documentary has played in the development of the modern public sphere
Discuss the part broadcasting and documentary has played in the development of the modern public sphere
This essay will discuss the role that documentary and broadcasting has played in the development of the modern public sphere. The first part of this essay will explore the public sphere with reference to Habermas. It will then go on to look at broadcasting and then documentary and what part they have played in the development of the modern public sphere.
The public sphere involves principles, institutes and groups of people. It is a specific and changing ideal and reality. The ongoing debate is that Habermas is the starting point and that the public sphere is increasingly moving away from him. The public sphere attaches itself to ideas of citizenship and nationhood. Habermas (1989) said the eighteenth century represents a missed opportunity of tremendous potential never realised, he said we must keep striving for a democratic public sphere. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries a new public sphere was freedom and democratic ways.
The BBC is funded through Television licensing, not through advertisement as it is for the public and not to make a profit. Habermas's view was that once activities were driven by the need to make a profit, restrictions would follow. The Television should be free of the state; offering a wide variety so more publics will view it. Today there are restrictions in the UK's public sphere, it is not very liberal democratic and it is not Habermas's ideal.
Before broadcasting, public events took place in particular places for particular publics, for example attendance at church, museums and galleries. Television and public service broadcasting provided mixed programmes on 'national' channels available to all with a wide range of programme types on a single channel. It made world events accessible and constituted a new form of public life allowing the ordinary voice to speak for itself, addressing the whole of society. Caughie (1986) says in a time of public speech and writing providing education, there was an increasing need for a more imaginative and widespread media of public address. Broadcasting brings private life into public life, requiring democratic content and appropriate styles of broadcasting. Public service broadcasting had to serve the public.
Public monopoly could only be justified by public service; but in order to serve the public, broadcasting had to be free from the commercial pressures of mass entertainment and from the political pressures of mass persuasion. The name, which was given to the various forms of negotiated relationship with the state and the market place (with the state as the lesser evil by a long way) was independence.' (Caughie, 1986, p.190).
The development of broadcasting has created audiences drawn from all sections of the population, and according to Scannell (1986) has created a new public composed of nearly the whole society. It was a new way of circulating information to everyone. Scannell says that it became a 'forum for debate and discussion on current matters of general concern, and thus a new site for the formation of public opinion.' (1986, p.212). The BBC started transmitting in 1922, after the Representation of the Peoples Act was passed in 1918. John Reith became the first Director-General of the new Corporation. Scannell ...
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The development of broadcasting has created audiences drawn from all sections of the population, and according to Scannell (1986) has created a new public composed of nearly the whole society. It was a new way of circulating information to everyone. Scannell says that it became a 'forum for debate and discussion on current matters of general concern, and thus a new site for the formation of public opinion.' (1986, p.212). The BBC started transmitting in 1922, after the Representation of the Peoples Act was passed in 1918. John Reith became the first Director-General of the new Corporation. Scannell (1986) argues that it created conditions of modern, mass democracy. It represented the interests of all members of society, binding them together in a common national identity. According to Scannell (1986) much pressure was put on the BBC to assist social problems such as unemployment, through broadcasting. These problems were allowed to be tackled after the ban on controversial broadcasting was lifted in early 1928, this had been imposed by the state.
The immediate post-war period changed from direct national propaganda to entertainment, information and education. Caughie (1986) says that it adopted an 'educative task' to redistribute classes by raising cultural standards. Director-general William Haley stated in 1943: 'The BBC must provide for all classes of listener equally. This does not mean it shall remain passive regarding the distribution of these classes. It cannot abandon the educative task it has carried on for twenty-one years to improve cultural and ethical standards.' (Caughie, 1986, p.194). He says that later television came to support the single play and Drama developed on television from the theatre. Its public insufficiently funded this public service and according to Caughie, what the public wanted was too expensive. The independent film industry took over and Caughie says that those who are now fulfilling and transforming the role of public service are heirs of Grierson and Reith.
Higson (1986) says that John Grierson (1898-1972) effectively founded the documentary film movement in the late twenties and he says it was Grierson who shaped the form of British documentary. Hood says 'he was drawn to film and cinema because he saw in it the 'the only democratic institution that has ever appeared on a world-wide scale'.'(1983, p.99). It was in 1921 that Grierson came across documentary when he met Robert Flaherty who produced a documentary on Eskimos called the 'Nanook of the North'. Grierson saw documentary as a way of explaining the workings of society and allowing citizens to make better judgements. In the 1930's the notion of public service was applied to documentary. They used experts and held interviews with the working class appearing as representatives and witnesses. There should be an absence of controversy in a documentary, representing the interdependence of social relations in a dramatic and symbolic way. Hood says 'documentary would photograph the living scene and the living story.' (1983. P.106). According to Higson 'the social-democratic impulse proposes that the documentary film - and social documentation in general - fills an information gap in establishing communication between the state and the citizen of the new democracy, thereby constructing a new public sphere.' (1986, p.77). Higson says that the thirties documentary deals with the work of 'public' institutions that are perceived as social, for example Housing Problems (Edgar Anstey and Arthur Elton, 1935) is made to publicise the British Commercial Gas Association, who sponsored it. This film deals with slum housing; it addresses the citizen as a spectator of the nation, not as a subject. Hood (1983) says that Griersons idea to use documentary to educate citizens in democracy and understanding society came to him when he was a post-graduate student in the early twenties. He met Walter Lippmann, an American writer whose views on education and public opinions made an impression on him. Lippmann said the vote only worked if it was an informed vote, otherwise democracy was not working. He said that people's knowledge came through the media and so it was stereotyped. Griersons (1983) idea that education was the key to advancement for both the individual and society were with him from a very early age, from his father being a head master in a small Scottish school. Hood says he also had a respect for those who carried out labour, which society could not function without.
Grierson (1983) argued that cinema provided a tool for changing opinions and fictional film was an informational and educational tool. Aitken said 'Grierson also argued the effective, socially purposive cinema must provide models for social action'.(1990, p.98). Stephen Tallents, a civil servant that was appointed in 1928 to run the Empire Marketing Board shared Griersons views that film should be used to educate and should be aimed at a broad range of public. On Griersons return from the United States he had him appointed as head of Empire Marketing Board Film Unit in 1928 with the brief to 'bring the Empire alive'. In doing this, Hood (1983) says that Tallents and Grierson found problems in that the cost of film making where too high. He says that this is where documentary started to go wrong as film makers were turning to other companies for financial help. For example a film produced by the British Documentary group, Basil Wrights Song of Ceylon won top awards at Brussels International Film Festival of 1935. But Hood argues that the film avoids the whole pint of a documentary film. It avoids colonial labour and economic exploitation of colonies. The film was produced by the GPO Film Unit in conjunction with the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board who funded it so it was not suprising that the film was bias. According to Higson (1986) Grierson argues that the commercial schemes drive towards profit, maximised the creation of superficial films. Hood says Griersons main gift was dealing with such organisations who funded the films. He made only one film, the Drifters, which shared the work of fishermen as they followed Herring Shoals. Hood says that Grierson dominated the whole documentary movement. He stood between filmmakers and their patrons and protected the documentary group from excessive interference. According to Aitken (1990) it was during the war that Grierson was able to establish the documentary movement securely within the state department. In late 1939 the Ministry of Information allowed this, although they made it clear to the filmmakers that their position was only temporary and that the Film Unit would be abolished after the war ended. Aitken (1990) says the documentary movement did expand in the late nineteen-thirties but that Grierson felt that the State-funded documentary movement had failed. The movement continued through funding from corporate sponsorship and Grierson left for Canada to establish a State-funded documentary movement there.
Caughie (1986) remarks on the similarities seen in Reith and Grierson. They are both Scottish, Grierson being the son of a head master and Reith was the son of the manse. Their upbringing placed them both in institutions, the church and the school. Higson (1986) feels this may have contributed to their feelings for education. To add to their similarities, Reith left the BBC in 1938 and Grierson left the GPO Film Unit in 1937. Leaving behind their influences of 'independence' and 'public service' in both the institutions. Habermas (1989) said we must keep striving for a democratic public sphere, and they have both sought to do this. In conclusion, today television provides a wide range of material; it still provides entertainment, information and education. Michael Grade, Chief Executive of Channel 4 Television says of today's reality:
A division is clearly growing between channels whose primary purpose is public service, and those which are obviously businesses seeking to maximise profits. For the former the ambition is to succeed in innovation, in refreshing the pool of home grown programmes, in accurately reflecting and stimulating the public mood and taste...Perhaps the best medicine is to make sure that the public service broadcasters, those who put the public service first, those who are committed to sustaining a creative, non-derivative production base, are properly supported, properly sustained and properly funded. We are heading towards an exciting and uncertain future... In the end, the public interest will remain very much the same as it is now: a right to free and fair communication, to choice, to unbiased news and to enjoy the highest standard of output - in all genres - that our narrative talent can produce.
Today we live in democracy, we can view what we like on television and there is a broad range of subjects to view. Although the world is changing and this will effect Britains public sphere we still have a right to free and fair communication. This is partly due to the changes that broadcasting and documentary have made to Britains public sphere.
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