The subject of 'independence' of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) has emerged as a key issue in post-apartheid South African public discourse. While the importance of 'independence' has rarely been questioned, the term's meaning has been subject to fragmented understandings and vague interpretations. This thesis explores the origins of divergent conceptions of 'independence', examining how these conceptions are constructed by staff within the SABC. The central task of this thesis is to critically examine the contested concept of 'independence' a task it accomplishes by engaging with issues of power, knowledge and identity. To this end, the thesis reveals that the neo-liberal policies imposed by the Washington Consensus play a significant role in shaping conceptions of 'independence' through their power to dictate policy in countries in the Global South, including South Africa. This power, exercised through dominant Washington Consensus institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), inform knowledge and identities at a local level through the adoption of neo-liberal macro-economic strategies, such as Growth Employment and Redistribution (GEAR). As a result, there is no local without the global. The engagement with issues of power, identity and knowledge and their relationships to how 'independence' is understood ensures that meanings of 'independence' are contested and that 'independence' is not an immovable edifice. 'Independence' is only a product of an evolving matrix, in which the staff of the SABC, who are divided into four different tiers, construct their own interpretations of 'independence', shaped by their understandings of both organisational and external factors, such as politics and advertisers, in relation to their work. Using data from interview respondents and an analysis of key public policy documents, this thesis presents two key processes that influence understandings of 'independence' and, therefore, link the SABC to the larger external socio-political environment. These two key factors, the commercialisation of the SABC and the African National Congress (ANC) power struggles have helped to shape the four conceptions of 'independence' advanced in this thesis: namely, the legalistic, anti-establishment, political and professional conceptions of 'independence'. At the core of this thesis are two questions: How do staff within the SABC construct and understand the meaning of 'independence' of the SABC, and what has influenced these conceptions in post-apartheid South Africa? Consistent with these research questions, the thesis is located within the interpretive tradition, since it seeks to understand the world of the SABC through the lens of its staff. To complement the interpretivist approach, the thesis situates the SABC and its understandings of 'independence' within the wider South African context, in which the meaning of 'independence' should also be understood as being inextricably intertwined with and a product of the shifting developmental state of the macro-economic environment. The critical political economy of the media is, therefore, used as an explanatory framework for understanding how the macro-worlds of politics and economic strategies intersect within the micro-world of the SABC to shape conceptions of 'independence'. The thesis concludes by arguing that it is not a strong and domineering state that seeks to control public service broadcasting; instead, it is a weak state that does so because of a need to curtail public discourse, which might present a threat to its own existence if left uncontrolled. As a result, it is difficult to separate the SABC from the state and, for that reason, the role of the public service broadcaster (PSB) is tied to the national narrative which itself is tied to the larger global matrices of power.

News directors fill, perhaps, one of the most difficult roles within the drama of the news room. In an environment where objectivity and trust are paramount, and where bias must be kept at an absolute minimum, the news director exists as the arbiter, balancing these journalistic ideals with the necessities for financial survival. This scenario presents a conflict, in which the news director must constantly balance the journalistic obligation to inform the public, with the managerial obligation to generate a profit. In an exploration of this conflict, I interviewed three news directors from KUTV, KSL, and KTVX within the Salt Lake City market, who each face different circumstances, but who each personify the conflict mentioned above. Each of these news directors place the most value on maintaining the quality of their news product, while still remaining conscious of the budget requirements set by corporate ownership. When push comes to shove, however, each news director interviewed for this study was of the opinion that news has to come first, even if it means going over budget. When addressing higher management in these over-budget situations, all three news directors tended to shift their conversation to the long-term perspective, reassuring their managers that costs (as a percentage) would drop over time, and revenues would increase. The sacrifice of news content for the sake of the budget was rare for all three news directors. Competition is seen as a way to better serve the community, long term, through increased revenue. Credibility is the balancing factor, keeping the business interests in check with the journalistic ideals.

Political structures and the evolution of late capitalism in liberal Western democracies lend a common frame to the development of national media systems. However, whereas media policy from the post-war period to the mid-1980s was largely driven by socio-political concerns and coextensive with policy for public service television, this model has been vehemently challenged. Key factors were the convergence of erstwhile-separated industries and infrastructures, as well as the ambitions of the corporate sector and governments alike, to benefit from the economic opportunities offered by the communications revolution. By assessing the changing relationship between the role of the state, economic structures and technological innovation, this research investigates these processes in the UK and Germany. Both countries have the two key public service systems but also feature striking differences such as the antithetic political systems and democratic processes (majoritarian vs. consensus democracy). The basic assumption suggests that a genuine understanding of contemporary developments is only possible if political/economic as well as historic/sociological perspectives are incorporated into the holistic approach applied. Thereby this study gives consideration to key processes and events which have determined transitions between communications policy paradigms and regulatory regimes. Given the Anglo-Saxon tradition of regulating, key processes and events in the UK are often indicated by the appointment and report of a committee of enquiry. For the purpose of this study the most crucial of these is the Committee on Financing the BBC (1986), which first applied market-driven politics onto British broadcasting, and whose recommendations still serve as a blueprint for current communications policy-making. In Germany the KtK Report (1974) formed the basis for decisive reforms in broadcasting and communications. Apart from that, however, Germany features the characteristic of administering state interventions in as detailed a manner as possible through legislation. Of central importance are, therefore, the rulings of the Federal Constitutional Court, which continuously set decisive parameters for the development of the broadcasting system. The thesis follows two driving themes which have been identified as crucial in terms of the comparative dimension and are elaborated continuously in more detail. First, the focus is on the interdependencies between public and private sector. Second, implications and responses of the central vis-à-vis federal characteristic of state formation are investigated. In doing so, the thesis draws on vast sources of archival documents as well as exclusive material from a series of elite interviews with a purposively-selected sample of very high-level sources, including Chairmen, Director-Generals, ministers, very senior civil servants and so on. The thesis demonstrates how communications policy-making is carried out in both countries and how these processes are determined by national regulatory frameworks which are rooted within the borders of the nation state. As such the research findings have broader implications for commercial and public sector regulation.

The main goal of this thesis was an investigation into the ways in which whiteness is constructed and positioned in the South African soap opera, 7de Laan, and the Flemish soap opera, Thuis, with the emphasis on the possible implications of these constructions for local as well as global discourses on whiteness in the media. In conjunction with the above, this thesis endeavoured to answer a number of subquestions relating to the origin and history of the construct of “whiteness” and Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) as a theoretical approach and its relevance in the South African and Flemish contexts, specifically as it pertains to the analysis of mass media texts like 7de Laan and Thuis. It, moreover, sought to explore if and how whiteness functions as an organising principle in the narratives and representations of these soap operas with the emphasis on potential similarities, differences and the kinds of whiteness constructed in these texts. Finally, the goal was to draw conclusions on the possible implications of these differences and similarities in the wider context of the way in which whiteness functions in the media. To that end I conducted a controlled case comparison of a sample from these two community soap opera texts, which was informed by a literature review and deep description of each context as part of the qualitative approach I chose to take. Despite a number of similarities between the two contexts, they still differ significantly, and this afforded me an opportunity to highlight both the consistencies and particularities in the ideological patterning of representations of whiteness, across seemingly unrelated domains, to illustrate its pervasiveness. Added to the emergence of three shared rhetorical devices perpetuating whiteness in both texts, I was also able to draw conclusions about the unique way in which whiteness functions in 7de Laan in particular, since South Africa remains the primary context of the study. / Communication Science / D. Litt. et Phil.(Communication)

This diploma thesis researches music dramaturgy of Czech public service radio Channel One (Radiožurnál) and pursues the goal of exploring hidden relations of political economy influencing its shape. The dramaturgy itself had been long criticised from both the public and experts and finally led to a public workshop held by the institution governing the broadcaster at arm's distance - The Council of Czech Radio in December 2011. The diploma thesis investigates the field of traditional requirements imposed on public service broadcasters as well as the redefinition of public service broadcasting due to market liberalisation and rise of new media in digital environment. For further context, the structural function of music in different types of societies is discussed; attention is also paid to relation of music and public service radio and normative demands for broadcasted music. Music dramaturgy of Czech Radio Channel One is then compared to two commercial broadcasters (Impuls and Evropa 2) on which only limited legal regulations are imposed. The final research describes public discussion over the channel's music and verifies legitimacy of complaints (which included too frequent repetition of songs and artists, few songs of one artist in database only or obscolencence of broadcasted music not giving a lead to...

Diploma thesis "Launch of the public-service culture channel: Broadcast analysis of ČT art until the year 2014" describes the origin and development of the channel ČT art, including an analysis of how it influenced the transformation of ČT2. This thesis, therefore, includes the programme composition of both channels monitoring the period from autumn 2013 to autumn 2014, as well as the programme composition of ČT2 from autumn 2012. This allows us to evaluate how ČT2 attended to cultural broadcasting before the launch of the new and thematically specialized channel ČT art. Moreover, the thesis tries to point out the trends taking place in television broadcasting such as digitalization, fragmentation of TV audiences and media convergence. These trends are illustrated by using specific examples from the Czech Television, as well as the theoretical foundation. The theoretical part of the thesis focuses on describing public-service media, services they provide and their roles in fulfilling the cultural needs of society. In addition, it also draws attention to examples of culturally oriented channels within Europe. The results of the analysis of programme schemes of both channels are complemented by findings from interviews with the leading employees of the Czech Television, which were not aimed to focus...

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The Master's Thesis "The selected cases of the third Mečiar's government and the bias in news coverage in the Slovak television" analyses a period of the third Mečiar's government on the basis of research focusing on the presence of bias in the news coverage in the Slovak television. This institution, which provides the public service broadcasting, is in general considered as a politicians' tool and during 1994-98 is described as a medium subordinated to the coalition government of that time, or even to a single political party. Due to the previous research dealing with election campaigns in 1998 we decided to focus on two significant events - the kidnapping of Michal Kováč jr. in 1995 and the 1997 referendum, which could present an illustration of the media production during the respected period. Closer characteristics of the socio-political situation with the accent on the selected cases is outlined in the introductory part of the work together with the bias issue and the concept of public service broadcasting. In this work we pay attention to the characteristics of evolution of the Slovak television after 1989 as well, and to a closer description of its functioning and broadcasting in 1994-1998. The final part deals with the very research of bias in the main STV news programme by using the...

This thesis combines histories of the implementation of ABC Online (the website of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Australia's largest national Public Service Broadcaster) with the political philosophies of Foucault, and of Deleuze and Guattari. Following the Deleuzian argument that institutions of enclosure are in crisis because they exist in between diagrams of the disciplinary and control societies, the thesis tests each of the Foucauldian diagrams of discipline, governmentality and control against the ABC as Public Service Broadcaster. It explores issues such as which ABC strategies belong to which diagram, and the ways in which changes in communications technologies altered governing rationales of these diagrams at the ABC. The thesis uses the implementation of ABC Online to explore the idea of the ABC in the late 1990s as operating in between social diagrams. One way of examining this 'in between-ness' is to use the Public Service Broadcasting idea as an instance of arboreal thinking and the internet idea as rhizomic. The thesis employs that model to argue that Public Service Broadcasting as it is practised is not merely an arboreal assemblage, and that actual implementations of the internet are more than merely rhizomic assemblages. The thesis details some of the earliest relations between broadcasting and the internet at the ABC, and describes the relations between rhizomic and arboreal images of the ABC at particular sites and in various discourses. This examination concludes that both ways of imagining the ABC - the arboreal and the rhizomic - have been essential to the success of ABC Online. While the position of the ABC in between social diagrams caused a sense of crisis, ABC Online was in fact successful largely because of its position in between social diagrams. Not only was ABC Online remarkably successful in its first five years, but it was successful in ways which could not be accommodated in such documents as the ABC Charter. The public silences of ABC Online both allowed it to thrive, and conversely supported arboreal stratified ways of defending the ABC. Defences of the ABC that used arboreal thinking as a rhetorical strategy continued to dominate public discussion of the ABC, despite the successes of contrary examples in practice. One such example was the successful implementation of Radio Australia Online at a time when the Mansfield Review sought to limit the scope of the ABC to domestic free-to-air broadcasting. When some ABC Online practices were publicised in relation to the proposed Telstra deal, the resultant controversy concentrated on the non-commercial/commercial boundary at the ABC. The controversy also highlighted fears that the Online environment may alter the ethical relations between the ABC and its publics. In particular, the ethical goals of independence and integrity were perceived as being under threat in the World Wide Web environment. These goals were further problematised within the organisation by the demands of interactive subsites. These subsites demonstrated an altered ethical relation between the ABC and its user in the online environment of the control society.

The principle aim of the study is to describe, analyze and problemize the ways in which television science documentaries (within a public service context) discursively represent scientific theories, research results and conclusions about the origins of human nature and the causes of human behavior. The study covers 25 programs broadcasted by SVT and UR during a period of four years,2002-2005 , and 12 additional programs are used as a basis for discussion. Most of the programs included in the study are productions purchased mainly from BBC Science. Thus, managing editors, producers and presenters were interviewed for the purpose of illuminating quality judgements and purchasing criteria. A five stage-model of critical discourse analysis has inspired the method which emphasizes the network of communicative practices in which the media text and representation are embedded. That includes media genre, production and narrative conventions as well as the wider historical, social and political/ideological context and discourse practices of which the issues represented are a part. The critical discourse analysis has been complemented by ideas about different documentary modes of representation or basic ways of organizing documentary texts in relation to certain recurrent features or conventions. In the analysis these modes have been applied to understand the degree of transparency and editorial presence and visibility in the science documentaries. The importance of the discourses presented is related to their more applied meanings. When certain descriptions, explanations and understandings of alleged human “basics” gain priority, it may affect the possibilities to define and handle very concrete social issues in a way that is inconsistent with this fundamental perspective. Thus, the ideological function of the science documentaries (as public service-program and educational media) deserves serious attention.