Like Looking for the Soul in a Test Tube: The Banal Corruptions of ‘Measuring Man’ in the New Age of Public Media

Abstract

It has become common place to suggest that the concept and institutions of public service broadcasting (PSB) are being fundamentally challenged by new technologies, new politics and new economics. Out of these challenges, in a kind of noble optimism, has emerged the idea that PSB can be reimagined as public service media, the worth of which can be made measurable and therefore ‘accountable.’ This article suggests that not only is this likely misplaced, it also masks the fact that what is actually in play is a historically defined struggle over the values that will constitute modernity.