Public Media vs. Commercial Media

Let's just talk about public media versus commercial media for a second here.

Now, based on the lecture for Week 2, public media is government funded and is usually non-profit (or at the very least, profit isn't the main goal) whereas commercial media is usually trying to make a profit.

As a result of this, most commercial media is full of ads and, let's call them "human interest," stories designed to get people reading/viewing/listening while public media can do more in-depth stories because their goal isn't to sell what they're providing, the goal is just to provide it... Supposedly.

The thing is though, reality is rarely as black and white as that. Yes, commercial media exists to turn a profit and that does result in stories that can be thrown together quickly that the majority of people will consume but it doesn't prevent them from writing about important issues such as politics. By a similar token, just because public media has the capacity to publish detailed, hyper-researched work, it doesn't necessarily mean that they will because they still have deadlines to meet and an audience to appeal to and they wouldn't be able to continue to function if they were to only cater to a niche market. That means that, to an extent, public media has to pander to the wants of the audience almost as much as commercial media does.

In a way, both commercial and public media don't have a great deal of say in what gets published. Commercial media has to adhere to  advertiser's whims while public media has to be careful about what content they create because their funding depends on governmental criteria.

When you think about it, they're basically the same. The actual content might be different but somebody else is still in charge dictating what can and can't be published and the person pulling the strings is usually the one with the money.