Needs and wants: the case of broadcasting policy

Abstract

In this article I identify two broad perspectives on broadcasting policy, each deploying very different assumptions regarding the role of policy in facilitating human well-being. I argue that in increasingly influential wants-based position draws upon an impoverished social ontology which is unable to sustain the distinction between wants and underlying needs. I also argue that the previously dominant beyond-wants perspective failed to elaborate its own contrasting presuppositions sufficiently. Drawing upon a perspective developed within economics under the heading of critical realism, I emphasize that needs can be formulated as goals only under definite historical conditions. As such, they may be poorly and even misleadingly formulated. Specifically, real needs can be manifest in a variety of historically contingent wants, which may then be met by any of a multitude of potential satisfiers. The point insisted upon here is that the two, real needs and expressed wants, should not be conflated. By maintaining this distinction it is possible to evaluate broadcasting systems not simply in terms of their ability to match outputs to wants but in terms of criteria beyond wants.