FAIR advisory: How to Save Ourselves From the 'Save PBS' Routine

Media Advisory

How to Save Ourselves From the ‘Save PBS’ Routine
2/18/11 | [print_link] It is as predictable as can be: Invigorated Republican politicians announce their intention to kill public broadcasting, which they claim is a bastion of liberal bias. Defenders of NPR and PBS step in to defend the system. The Republicans, who were unlikely to win a vote on their plan, retreat for the moment. Public broadcasting is “saved.” (See Slate, 2/10/11.)

The public broadcasting fight of 2011 is playing out the same way. A more productive discussion of public broadcasting is sorely needed–one that is not reduced to “save it” or “kill it.”

The purpose of public broadcasting is clear: to promote ideas and perspectives that are ignored or underrepresented in the commercial media. As the 1967 Carnegie Commission put it, it should “provide a voice for groups in the community that may otherwise be unheard,” serve as “a forum for controversy and debate,” and broadcast programs that “help us see America whole, in all its diversity.” How well public broadcasting is living up to those ideals should be the principal test for gauging its value.

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The Editor Says: “Like much of the establishment newsmedia, the PBS NewsHour, currently helmed by Jim Lehrer, is a show by establishment drones for establishment drones and an undifferentiated mass of comfortable upper middle class liberals. Its priggishness, inauthenticity and self-impressed air of “high journalism” are ludicrous, when we consider its record. If the rightwing barbarians are to chop anything off of the PBS tree, let them carry this pathetic program down to their stenchy cloacas. It shouldn’t be missed.”

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Most of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) funding under question goes to local stations, but much of the discussion on both sides revolves around familiar national programming. Some shows represent a good faith effort to live up to the vision laid out by the Carnegie Commission. But as FAIR’s decades of research has shown, others–like the PBS NewsHour–do not, relying on sources and perspectives that mimic the corporate-owned media (Extra!, 11/10). If anything, the attacks from the right serve to make room for additional conservative voices on PBS. As FAIR pointed out (Extra!, 9-10/05), “A rival to Fox News Channel could be launched with the list of conservatives who have hosted or produced shows on public television over the years.”

So what would be a better way? The CPB was intended to insulate public broadcasters from political pressure, acting as a “heat shield.” The fact that this tired routine is upon us once again is proof that it does not serve that function. To the contrary, the CPB has long been used as a political tool to encourage certain kinds of programming and discourage others. (Funneling grants to local stations was considered a good way to develop more conservative programming in the Nixon administration.) During the Bush years, the CPB encouraged right-wing PBS shows to counter alleged liberal bias–giving us Tucker Carlson and the Wall Street Journal‘s hard right editorial page on public television, supported by public money (FAIR Action Alert, 9/17/04).

Publicly funded media is something worth fighting for at a local and national level. But the politics of the current fight are clear: The right calls for budget cuts because it says NPR and PBS are too left-wing. Liberal defenders weigh in to defend the CPB budget, making few or no demands on public broadcasters. This all but guarantees that public broadcasting will continue to be pushed to the right, and further away from its intended mission. As FAIR described the dynamic (Extra!, 9-10/05):

With each successive attack from the right, public broadcasting becomes weakened, as programmers become more skittish and public TV’s habit of survival through capitulation becomes more ingrained.

Even if full CPB funding were restored and political cronies like Ken Tomlinson removed from their posts, the same potential for using the CPB appropriation process as a tool to force public broadcasting further to the right would still exist. If recent history is any guide, it would only be a matter of time until PBS would need to be saved once again—most likely at the cost of yet more concessions to the right.

What’s needed is a truly independent funding mechanism–as FAIR and others have called for over the years (6/8/06). A 1.5 percent dedicated tax on TV advertising, for example, would provide $1 billion a year for a public broadcasting system that would be truly free from both commercial pressures and political interference. Such a system would have a good chance of living up to the Carnegie Commission’s ideals.

Certainly, public broadcasting supporters should demand a whole lot more than the status quo. If the energy behind the campaigns to “save” the CPB were dedicated to building support for an independent public trust, we could build the kind of public media system the country deserves.

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ADDENDUM

Below an excerpt from the Wikipedia on the notorious deficiency or even uselessness of the PBS NewsHour, a revered program among mainstream liberals. I guess by their preferences thou shalt know them. Pay special attention to the “reply” sent by the NewsHour’s Exec Producer to FAIR. It literally bristles with the usual corporate hack centrist arrogance. —P. Greanville
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Criticism

Critics have accused the American news media—including the NewsHour—of having a pro-establishment bias.

In the documentary Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, Noam Chomsky criticizes the short span of time that he was allotted when interviewed on the NewsHour in September 1990. Chomsky complains that a short format allows only the repetition of conventional wisdom, not the exploration of ideas.^[9] In 1992, radio broadcaster David Barsamian called the NewsHour “stenographers to power.”^[10]

FAIR study

In October 2006, the progressive media criticism group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) accused the NewsHour of lacking balance, diversity, and viewpoints of the general public, in favor of Republican Party and corporate viewpoints.^[11] FAIR studied the NewsHour‘s guest list for 6 months, from October 2005 to March 2006. Republicans outnumbered Democrats 2:1 (66% to 33%), and people of color made up only 15% of U.S.-based sources. Former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales accounted for 30% of Latino sources, while former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accounted for 13% of African-American sources. Additionally, Hurricane Katrina victims made up 46% of all African-American sources. Public interest groups made up 4% of sources. Current and former government and military officials made up 50% of sources. Regarding the Iraq War, sources that supported an extended occupation outnumbered pro-withdrawal sources 5:1, and this ratio continued even after polls favored a withdrawal from Iraq. During this time, not a single peace activist appeared.^[11] NewsHour’s Executive Producer Linda Winslow responded to many aspects. “FAIR seems to be accusing us of covering the people who make decisions that affect people’s lives, many of whom work in government, the military, or corporate America. That’s what we do: we’re a news program, and that’s who makes news” and she also took issue with FAIR’s characterization of each guest stating “I take issue with the way the FAIR report characterizes each guest, which they have obviously done very subjectively. Witness the trashing of Mark Shields and Tom Oliphant (in the full report), who are not liberal ENOUGH for FAIR’s taste. When you get down to arguing about DEGREES of left-and-rightness, I think you undermine your own argument.” PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler agreed with FAIR’s report. These are “perilous times”, wrote Getler in his Ombudsman column. “As a viewer and journalist, I find the program occasionally frustrating; sometimes too polite, too balanced when issues are not really balanced, and too many political and emotion-laden statements pass without factual challenges from the interviewer.”^[12] FAIR also protested in 1995 when Liberty Media purchased a majority of the program, citing Liberty’s majority owner, John Malone, for his “Machiavellian business tactics” and right-wing sentiments.^[13]