Before I launch forth yet again on a discussion of public broadcasting, let me note that I like NPR and listen to NPR news daily–and , indeed, have been listening to All Things Considered since 4th grade and Morning Edition on a regular basis for probably near to twenty years. While there are times I note a particular slant on a given story, this is hardly a big deal to me. Heck, all broadcasters on various networks frequently reveal a shade of opinion this way or that.
As such, I don’t see NPR or news programming on PBS to be a communist plot to subvert the good and virtuous people of America. I view them as one source amongst many in a vast sea of information sources.
My solution to Bill Moyers? Not watching him. I find him to be self-righteous, pompous, not-wholly-acquainted-with-the-facts rabid partisan who is so attuned to his point of view only that he may well be to the point of being unable to objectively analyze politics in any way. He is not alone in that description, by the way, whether we are talking about the Left or the Right.
The problem with Moyers, as far as I am concerned, is that the network upon which he used to appear on a regular basis, was partially funded by tax dollars. If you fund things with tax dollars, people are going to complain about what the tax dollars may be buying. And when those tax dollars are buying reporting, even if only in part, a power struggle will emerge over what is said in those broadcasts. The current struggle over CPB funding and ideological content of programming is a small scale example of the wisdom behind the Free Press clause of the First Amendment.
This leads to Frank Rich’s bemoanings about the current attempts by some conservatives to influence the ideological content of programming on PBS and NPR. From today’s NYT: The Armstrong Williams NewsHour
That doesn’t mean the right’s new assault on public broadcasting is toothless, far from it. But this time the game is far more insidious and ingenious. The intent is not to kill off PBS and NPR but to castrate them by quietly annexing their news and public affairs operations to the larger state propaganda machine that the Bush White House has been steadily constructing at taxpayers’ expense. If you liked the fake government news videos that ended up on local stations – or thrilled to the “journalism” of Armstrong Williams and other columnists who were covertly paid to promote administration policies – you’ll love the brave new world this crowd envisions for public TV and radio.
Let me be clear: this entire business makes me itchy. However, Rich is getting a tad hyperbolic here, not to mention rather hypocritical. This is almost a case of what is good for the goose is good for the gander: there is no denying that PBS and NPR have tilted in the Liberal direction from Day One, so crying about the encroachment of ideology into the programming mix is a bit silly. It’s not like Mr. Moyers was a nonpartisan, for example.
Of course, my solution to the problem is, as I have written many times before, is to forget policing ideological content, a process I find creepy and anti-democratic, and instead take awayb any tax dollars and let the market decide.
And rather than focus my ire at “liberal” programming I will note a conservative example: The Journal Editorial Report. Now, I recall the exact same show being on CNBC (or maybe it was MSNBC or perhaps both) several years back. Clearly, it didn’t have the ratings, so now it is on PBS. This hardly seems like the market at work. Rather, because PBS doesn’t have to function within the market, and because some decisions are clearly being made for ideological reasons rather than for business reasons, programs are aired that otherwise would never make it on TV.
Why do we need to be subsidizing that?
Really, the only reason purpose for government subsidies in general that I can see are for those things that serve a clear public good, but that the market will not provide. By that definition, we don’t need the CPB. And there is no doubt that the worthy programming on PBS would flourish without taxpayers subsidy. Does anyone really think that most of the children’s programming on PBS couldn’t survive on its own?
Of course, Rich fears for CPB’s news offerings:
Will monitors start harassing Jim Lehrer’s “NewsHour,” which Mr. Tomlinson trashed at a March 2004 State Department conference as a “tired and slowed down” also-ran to Shepard Smith’s rat-a-tat-tat newscast at Fox News? Will “Frontline” still be taking on the tough investigations that network news no longer touches? Will the reportage on NPR be fearless or the victim of a subtle or not-so-subtle chilling effect instilled by Mr. Tomlinson and his powerful allies in high places?Forget the pledge drive. What’s most likely to save the independent voice of public broadcasting from these thugs is a rising chorus of Deep Throats.
No, the solution is glaringly simple: sever the CPB from the federal government, and find a way to get more grants, more viewer contributions or a limited sale of commercials. Let the market rule and get the government wholly out of the business of funding new of any kind.
June 27th, 2005 at 12:27 pm
Frankly, I think a free society cannot be such without a vigorously independent source of news that is for the public good and not for private or political gain. In that light, the politicization of CPB, NPR, and PBS is alarming. But the solution clearly is not to cut it off from public money and make it MORE dependent on corporate largesse.
I do still listen to NPR daily, but it has lost its former high-quality edge. I would listen to BBC if I could get it without having to be by the computer. Now THAT is a model of the independent media I am talking about.
As for the mainstream TV media, I gave up on them LONG ago. I do watch NWI, which carries CBC (another model) and DW (an even better model) and NHK (a “good” example of what happens when a “public” news media is on too short a leash from the government).
The absence of genuine PUBLIC news media in the US is one of the most troubling of the many and growing defcits we face in our democracy and public citizenship.
I do not care what side you are on, or what side the government is on. If the news media are not reporting inconvenient facts and asking uncomfortable questions of those in power, and challenging the conventional views of the public they serve, they manifestly are not doing their public duty. We have lost that, with the increasing corporate takeover of the mainstream media (including print) and the increasing political segregation of the “echo chambers” in forums like talk radio and the Internet (fortunately, THIS blog does not face that problem!).
These trends are truly alarming.
June 27th, 2005 at 2:37 pm
However, Rich is getting a tad hyperbolic here, not to mention rather hypocritical.
A tad? Heh. Rich’s problem is he is arguing both a) against cutting government funding; and b) against turning PBS into a propaganda machine. As such, his arguments cross paths at times to most confusing effect.
First, I’d note that most of the funding cuts have been taken out of the final version of the appropriations bill, and second, I think the folks at CPB can make a strong argument for public funding, if they could just remember what it was. As it is, they are just engaging in scare tactics.
Indeed, I think part of the problem for PBS is that they are no longer the sole source for the types of programming they provide, as they were during the three-network oligopoly days pre cable/satellite.