WebinarThursday 9 April 2020
12:00pm – 1:00pm
Covid-19 and Public Media Services - BBC & NHK
This event will be hosted as an online webinar
Organised by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
The Covid-19 outbreak is changing the context of public media services in the UK and Japan, which until very recently were experiencing significant challenges in maintaining public trust and funding through their licence fee systems. Trust in the media has been eroded at an alarming rate by the increased polarisation of political identities and public debate, and the spread of fake news. Simultaneously, the licence fee system used to fund public media has been severely questioned by the general public and politicians. In the UK, for instance, the government is questioning the appropriateness of the current licence fee system that funds the BBC. In Japan, there is even a specifically anti-NHK political party. With decreased public trust and threats to the licence fee system, the survival of public media services seems to be at risk.
Nevertheless, both the BBC and NHK are now playing key roles in coverage of the latest news on the Coronavirus outbreak, gaining increased attention and interest from the public in their content over the past weeks. Under the current circumstances, public media services have been in the spotlight as never before. Against this background, it is worth asking – what is the future of public services? Are they still relevant? and equally interesting, can their licence fee model be replaced by a subscription-based approach? In this webinar, NHK journalist Kohei Tsuji and Professor Ivor Gaber from Sussex University talked about the role of and challenges faced by public service media in the UK and Japan.
This event was hosted as an online webinar, accessible remotely.
Presentation by Professor Ivor GaberA video of the webinar can be found here:
About the contributors
Professor Ivor Gaber
Professor Ivor Gaber is the University of Sussex’s first Professor of Journalism and is Emeritus Professor of Broadcast Journalism at Goldsmiths, University of London. Prior to joining Sussex he held chairs in Journalism at City University London and the University of Bedfordshire. Before entering academia he was a political journalist during which time he reported and produced programmes for BBC TV and Radio, ITN, Channel Four and Sky News. He currently makes documentary programmes for Radio 4 and is an Independent Editorial Advisor to the BBC Trust. He has a particular interest in media development and has worked with political journalists in a number of developing countries transitioning to democracy. His most recent projects have been in Uganda, Nigeria and Malawi. He represents the UK on the Communications Sector at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Science. He has written widely on political communications issues and is a frequent contributor on TV and radio in the UK and overseas. He also provides advice and training on media and communications issues for public, private and campaigning organisations.
Kohei Tsuji
Kohei Tsuji is a foreign affairs journalist for Japanese public broadcaster NHK, covering the Middle East. He has spent three years in Jerusalem as Bureau Chief. Kohei’s work has focused on the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Arab Spring, Syrian refugees and numerous other issues in the region. Kohei also has extensive experience of covering the great earthquake and tsunami that struck northern Japan in 2011. He spent three years there reporting how people and the government tried to recover after the disaster. Having experienced the difficulties of reporting complicated reality without oversimplifying, Kohei is searching for new ways to deliver news. He is currently studying at the Reuters Institute of the Study of Journalism in Oxford to find out how to restore trust in public service media and how they could engage with the audience.