scholarly journals The New TVOntario: Salvation or Suicide for Public Educational Broadcasting

2001 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsten Kozolanka

Abstract: When faced with privatization by the Ontario government, the public educational broadcaster TVOntario took a pro-active stance in the face of the neo-liberal ideology of reduced public expenditure and institutional restructuring. TVO won short-term salvation by embracing market model methods, but in so doing it may have lost its niche as a public educational broadcaster. It now faces two major policy challenges. It must balance its general-audience broadcast arm with its newly refocused educational arm and it must negotiate possible political interference from the imperative to connect the government's newly revised school curricula to its new technology-in-education arm. This paper also situates the TVO example as a rejection of the privatization agenda of the Government of Ontario. Finally, this paper uses the TVO example to raise questions about hybrid models of broadcasting. Résumé: Pour éviter que le gouvernement de l'Ontario ne la privatise, la station éducative publique TVOntario a adopté une position qui prend les devants face à la volonté néolibérale de réduire les dépenses publiques et restructurer les institutions. À court terme, TVO s'est protégé en adoptant des méthodes axées sur le marché, mais celles-ci lui ont peut-être coûté son créneau particulier à titre de diffuseur éducatif public. En effet, TVO doit maintenant relever deux défis politiques imposants. La station doit équilibrer le besoin de s'adresser à un auditoire général avec celui remis au point d'offrir des émissions éducatives. En outre, elle doit parer à des interventions politiques possibles émanant de son obligation de relier le nouveau curriculum scolaire à sa nouvelle branche consacrée à la technologie dans l'éducation. Cet article discute de TVO comme manifestant un rejet des projets de privatisation du gouvernement ontarien. Finalement, l'article utilise l'exemple de TVO pour soulever des questions sur des modèles de radiodiffusion hybrides.

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-281
Author(s):  
Sylvia Dümmer Scheel

El artículo analiza la diplomacia pública del gobierno de Lázaro Cárdenas centrándose en su opción por publicitar la pobreza nacional en el extranjero, especialmente en Estados Unidos. Se plantea que se trató de una estrategia inédita, que accedió a poner en riesgo el “prestigio nacional” con el fin de justificar ante la opinión pública estadounidense la necesidad de implementar las reformas contenidas en el Plan Sexenal. Aprovechando la inusual empatía hacia los pobres en tiempos del New Deal, se construyó una imagen específica de pobreza que fuera higiénica y redimible. Ésta, sin embargo, no generó consenso entre los mexicanos. This article analyzes the public diplomacy of the government of Lázaro Cárdenas, focusing on the administration’s decision to publicize the nation’s poverty internationally, especially in the United States. This study suggests that this was an unprecedented strategy, putting “national prestige” at risk in order to explain the importance of implementing the reforms contained in the Six Year Plan, in the face of public opinion in the United States. Taking advantage of the increased empathy felt towards the poor during the New Deal, a specific image of hygienic and redeemable poverty was constructed. However, this strategy did not generate agreement among Mexicans.


2014 ◽  
Vol 652 (1) ◽  
pp. 206-221
Author(s):  
Anton Harber

Two decades of contestation over the nature and extent of transformation in the South African news media have left a sector different in substantive ways from the apartheid inheritance but still patchy in its capacity to fill the democratic ideal. Change came fast to a newly open broadcasting sector, but has faltered in recent years, particularly in a public broadcaster troubled by political interference and poor management. The potential of online media to provide much greater media access has been hindered by the cost of bandwidth. Community media has grown but struggled to survive financially. Print media has been aggressive in investigative exposé, but financial cutbacks have damaged routine daily coverage. In the face of this, the government has turned its attention to the print sector, demanding greater—but vaguely defined—transformation and threatened legislation. This has met strong resistance.


2013 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-24
Author(s):  
Guy Davidov ◽  
Maayan Davidov

Research on compliance has shown that people can be induced to comply with various requests by using techniques that capitalise on the human tendencies to act consistently and to reciprocate. Thus far this line of research has been applied to interactions between individuals, not to relations between institutions. We argue, however, that similar techniques are applied by courts vis-à-vis the government, the legislature and the public at large, when courts try to secure legitimacy and acceptance of their decisions. We discuss a number of known influence techniques – including ‘foot in the door’, ‘low-balling’, ‘giving a reputation to uphold’ and ‘door in the face’ – and provide examples from Israeli case law of the use of such techniques by courts. This analysis offers new insights that can further the understanding of judicial decision-making processes.


Author(s):  
Mohd Izzat Latifa ◽  
Zukarnain Zakaria

Recently, Blockchain technology has attracted great attention in both private organisations and the public sector around the world. However, not many are aware and understand this new technology. Thus, lack of understanding of the Blockchain technology could influence the intention in adopting the technology. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to identify the behaviour intention towards adopting Blockchain Technology in the Malaysian Public Sector. Data were gathered using a questionnaire to analyse the relationship between factors such as Performance Expectancy, Effort Expectancy, Social Influence, Facilitating Conditions and Trust with Behavioural Intention to adopt Blockchain Technology. The data were gathered from 100 officers in various government department. The survey revealed that majority of the government officers are aware about the Blockchain technology. However, most of them have inadequate exposure and knowledge about the technology. Findings from the regression analysis found that Trust, Performance Expectancy and Social Influence positively and significantly influence the behaviour intention of government officers in adopting Blockchain technology. Meanwhile, Effort Expectancy and Facilitating Conditions were found not significant. The findings from this study suggest that it is essential to develop strategies to implement a suitable Blockchain application in the public sector. Prior to such implementation, it is imperative for government officers to be equipped with knowledge, skills and resources related to the Blockchain technology.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2(163) ◽  
pp. 9-26
Author(s):  
Piotr Bednarz

The years of the First World War were also a difficult period for Swiss society. Its political polarization came out particularly sharply in the face of the political crises that occurred at the time. One of the most serious was the so-called Grimm-Hoffmann affair of June 1917. The leader of the Swiss socialist milieu, one of the better-known parliamentarians, Robert Grimm, who went to Stockholm to attend the socialist congress and then to Petrograd, turned out to be a secret agent of the head of the Political Department of the Swiss government, Arthur Hoffmann. Robert Grimm’s mission was to probe the new Russian government about the possibility of a separate peace between Russia and Germany. This exposed unlawful action, undertaken without the agreement of the government, led to an international scandal, as the actions of R. Grimm and A. Hoffmann were contrary to Switzerland’s policy of neutrality. At the same time, there was an intensified press campaign in the country against A. Hoffmann, ending with his resignation. The arguments used by the public in their attacks on A. Hoffmann, clearly show that the Swiss society did not tolerate the actions of parliamentarians that went against the customs of a democratic state.


Author(s):  
David Omand

How governments understand and thus come to conceptualise and explain current and future threats and the calibration of their response across all the levers open to government at home and abroad is seen as key to sound strategy. The prevailing approach to domestic security planning after 9/11 as part of the British counter-terrorism strategy, CONTEST, is seen as heavily influenced by the growing application of risk management as a planning tool in government generally and is contrasted with the US approach. The influence of unrelated external events, including the revelations of Edward Snowden, is examined as a factor disturbing the domestic calculus of the ‘thermodynamics’ of counter-terrorism: how the government can best exercise its primary duty to protect the public in the face of a severe terrorist threat and yet maintain civic harmony and uphold democratic values and the rule of law at home and internationally. This chapter argues that the overall challenge for the future is to maintain public confidence that it is possible for government having absorbed such lessons to discharge its responsibilities for public safety and security whilst behaving ethically in accordance with modern views of human rights, including personal privacy, in a world where deference to authority and automatic acceptance of the confidentiality of government business no longer holds sway.


2002 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 499-544
Author(s):  
A.T.H. Smith

Once upon a time, the Crown faced almost no difficulties in securing convictions for breaches of the Official Secrets Act 1911, particularly section 2. After the somewhat embarrassing decision to proceed had been taken, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. Occasionally, the jury revolted, as they did in Ponting [1985] Crim. L.R. 315, producing something like a perverse verdict in the face of the judicial direction that it was no defence that the defendant believed himself to be acting in the public interest. That decision, and the ruling of the House of Lords in the Spycatcher litigation [1990] 1 A.C. 109 to the effect that the former security service agent Peter Wright did not commit an actionable breach of confidence by making his allegations of improper practices within the services, prompted the government of the day to promote legislation that purported to impose life-long obligations of confidence upon members and former members of the security intelligence services. “Purported” because, with the enactment of the Human Rights Act 1998, it is now open to the courts inter alia to declare that Parliament has acted incompatibly with one of the rights protected by that Act.


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-28
Author(s):  
Colin Feasby

Quebec’s Bill 21, which seeks to restrict employees in its public service from displaying religious symbols at work, has attracted a number of constitutional challenges. In one of those challenges, Hak v Quebec (Attorney General), the plaintiffs sought an injunction suspending the operation of parts of Bill 21 pending a decision on the merits.1 Both the Quebec Superior Court and the Quebec Court of Appeal declined to issue an injunction. The majority of the Quebec Court of Appeal found that in enacting Bill 21 the legislature must be presumed to have acted in the public interest and, as such, the third part of the injunction test — balance of convenience — could not be satisfied. The idea that Parliament and provincial legislatures must be presumed to be acting in the public interest — what I will call the public interest presumption — is problematic in Charter cases concerning constraints of fundamental rights and the treatment of minorities. Parliament and provincial legislatures are majoritarian institutions; they are the product of elections where the candidates and parties with the most votes win. A core objective of the Charter is to protect minorities from being oppressed by the majority. Giving too much weight to a majoritarian conception of the public interest in interlocutory injunction applications concerning minority rights undermines the Charter and negates injunctions and stays as elective remedies, particularly where an applicant establishes real harm. To fulfill the Charter’s mandate to protect minority rights it must be recognized that the government does not have a monopoly on representing the public interest and that a majoritarian conception of the public interest cannot control the outcome of the balance of convenience test in the face of evidence that other aspects of the public interest are harmed by the impugned legislation. This short article argues for a much weaker public interest presumption: one that may be rebutted by an applicant adducing evidence of harm to an identifiable group. 1  Hak c Procureure Générale du Québec, 2019 QCCA 2145 [Hak].


Mapping Power ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 72-92
Author(s):  
Megha Kaladharan

Delhi’s electricity sector represents a case of privatization in the face of electoral populism. Publicly-supported privatization-based reform, introduced by the Congress government, yielded some service quality gains to customers and political advantage to the government. However, these reforms also sowed the seeds of future discontent by introducing tension between the credibility of reforms and that of the regulator. Reforms became politically unpopular, as the public was mobilized to protest tariff hikes and question the gains from reform. Moreover, financial pressures rose as a result of two forces: growing regulatory assets allowed by the regulator as a way of staving off tariff increases and increases in power purchase costs due to imprudent contract lock-in. A new AAP in government sought consumer gains through transparency-focused reform along with targeted subsidies, but this fell afoul of Delhi’s federal politics. Reform allowed Delhi to change the equation between politics and electricity, but not in a manner that was sustainable.


Res Publica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mateusz Pilich

AbstractThe article takes up the difficult problem of the so-called disobedience of judges against the background of the experiences of the Polish departure from constitutional democracy in 2015–2020. The special role and responsibility of a judge in the state imposes restrictions on her freedom of opinion in the public sphere. Openly manifesting opposition to government policy, which in the case of an ordinary citizen is only the implementation of human rights and freedoms, may be described as controversial and contrary to applicable ethical regulations. The main thesis of this paper is the assertion that although judges who act as impartial arbitrators in disputes should generally refrain from ostentatiously opposing the actions of political authorities, they are not deprived of the possibility of protest. Also in the exercise of office, and not outside the sphere of their duties, judges should take into account overriding moral values that should be implemented by the legal order, and not the values or declarations guiding the government policies. The integrity of the judge, which prescribes restraint in statements and actions in the public sphere, as well as the care for the dignity of the office held, should not be confused with absolute subordination to the legislature or the executive, even if the judge is obliged to apply the law. The traditional attitude of the members of the judiciary, consisting in focusing only on the application of the law in individual cases and the lack of any political involvement, is being reviewed in the face of the spread of majoritarianism and the law abuse as normal techniques of exercising public authority. The disobedience of judges—although difficult to defend at first sight—may seem to be the only possible way to draw public attention to the corruption of the state system. The ‘disobediant’ judges can even be assigned the role of ‘whistleblowers’, which should help to ease their legal liability or their future rehabilitation.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document