Between crisis and cultural emancipation: re-evaluating the role of the public media in the digital age

With the ongoing re-democratization of the social and political institutions in Brazil since the mid-80’s onwards following the end of the dictatorship (1985), the discussion concerning the strengthening of the public media platform has gained in importance in the last years, moving beyond petty politics to become more a vision which favours the fortification of a public media sector committed to the public interest. The debate has gained momentum at a crucial period in the contemporary political history of Latin America, when many countries are seeking to boost their public media sectors and are looking for ways of integrating these platforms and of transcending language barriers in order to establish wider cultural and political links. On the 2nd of December 2007, the public television station TV Brasil, which belongs to the Empresa Brasileira de Comunicacao (EBC), was launched by the Ministry of Culture and the Brazilian government parallel to the launch of the digital TV transmissions. Immersed in media hype and frowned upon by the market sector, the event took place amid intense debate in regards to the sector’s capacity of opening up a whole new chapter in the project of deepening media democratization, which has been a result of a series of pressures articulated by various sectors of civil society, journalists and academics. This paper aims to contribute to this emerging debate by pursuing a comparative research project which aims to contrast the reasons for the crisis of PSB in advanced capitalist societies, mainly in Europe and specifically in the UK, with the ways in which it can contribute to wider media democratization in developing nations. Paper prepared for the Fifth Anniversary Conference of the Department of Media Communications, ‘Media, Communication & Humanity’, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, 21-23 September 2008