Good media entertains, informs and educates_美文

Good media entertains, informs and educates

From my experience in American TV, when important pro-social subjects were embedded in a continuing storyline in a family drama full of the conflict and angst that mirror everyday life, it was really effective. Why? Because people could receive the information, almost unconsciously, on an emotional, as well as an intellectual, level. Thankfully, SARFT decided not to remove this important tool.

China isn't the first or the last country to grapple with these issues. Americans, for example, have gone through some similar cultural soul-searching. By law, the US broadcast media is required to operate in the public interest. Here you'd call it "serve the people".

Newton Minow, appointed by then US president John F. Kennedy as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, the US version of SARFT, delivered a speech to a stunned media industry calling television "a vast wasteland" and demanding reforms. That was more than 50 years ago.

Minow also famously said that what's in the public interest is not necessarily what interests the public. And this is one of the places that China needs to pay attention. Good TV has to simultaneously entertain, educate and inform. This is no mean feat and certainly one rarely attained anywhere.

There is nothing wrong with buying the formats of successful TV series from other countries. As long as the intellectual property is bought and not stolen, there is no issue.

I can't imagine how the now-defunct SARFT regulations would have helped China sell its original programs to the world. The likelihood of "Created in China" has been spared yet another blow.