Public Media in America and Poland

On Thursday, we attended an official conference "Public Media Funding in Poland" in Jagiellonskiego University. We had several scholars, professors and officers came to share their thoughts about public media with us.

First, our Professor Bozena Mierzejewska gave introductions on both American public media and Polish public media. As a tool serving democracy, American public media is there to inform and educate the citizens after it first appeared in 1967. And for a better understanding of the role of public media in America, the question of whether Public Media should exist or not was brought up and to answer that, we have to first figure out whether the market can deliver what is needed or not. While the answer is yes, a efficient delivery of products and flexible response to customer needs should be examined. Yet problem exists while market reproduces inequality and importantly, markets don't judge, they deliver whatever the customers want. 

Second, while there is a long tradition in promoting diversity in market, the federal provides funds to public media as we can see that 540 million was given in 2013. However, that was only 0.0012% of the total federal budgets of that year, which surprised me a lot. Except for the bad news,  in fact some figures are on the rise, for example, unique visitors to public media and downloads of podcasts. And what's interesting is that now more than half of public media content is viewed on mobile platforms. 

Compared to America, the media system in Poland and Europe, as several of the speakers have mentioned, is dated, insufficient and not even functional. Big problems exist especially in public media funding and license fee issues. As we can see, nowadays, there exists a mixed but highly fragmented system of public media funding, which includes subscriptions, commercials, copyrights issues and so on. And as professor Slawomir Rogowski said, public medias in Poland don't have to try to catch up with private medias, but it should be able to do what the private medias are unable to do. So, what exactly can be done to solve those problems and how to reach the goal? As all of the speakers have mentioned, a brand new funding system, a proper elected organizational structure and amended law concerning public media are in badly needs. Moreover, the resolving of the problem relies on an adequate interpretation of the definition of "public mission", which is to serve the public under the common good. 

Another challenge that polish public media is now facing is the digitalization of every media channels, especially for radios, which would "cease to exist", according to professor Andrzej Wyrobiec, if it doesn't go digital. 

I learned a lot since I have never had a chance to know about public medias in European countries. And it was an honor for us to have the opportunity listening to the speeches delivered by important  media seniors.