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The Attack on Public Broadcasting
Frank Rich's latest NYT is scary stuff. Entitled The Armstrong Williams News Hour, the piece begins:
"HERE'S the difference between this year's battle over public broadcasting and the one that blew up in Newt Gingrich's face a decade ago: this one isn't really about the survival of public broadcasting. So don't be distracted by any premature obituaries for Big Bird. Far from being an endangered species, he's the ornithological equivalent of a red herring....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. "I try not to do too much political stuff here, but this piece got to me. Read it, argue with it if you disagree, but pay attention!
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Comments: 11
ed [27 June 2005 03:22 AM]
Taxpayers have been paying for a non-state run propaganda machine for a great many years already... to PBS.
Lola [27 June 2005 05:36 AM]
All I want is parity in viewpoints. I don't want my tax dollars to go to an entity that doesn't give equal time to my viewpoint - this is what PBS is doing right now. All I want is fairness and equal time. If you don't like the show, change the channel. But give people whose tax dollars are being spent an opportunity to get their shows into alloted time slots.
Tim O'Reilly [27 June 2005 08:14 AM]
Lola --
PBS is a lot more "fair and balanced" than, say Fox News, which claims to be. While there may be a strong editorial leaning towards what some would consider a liberal point of view in terms of what topics are chosen, the guests on talk shows are almost always from both sides, and there is in fact equal time to multiple points of view. That's what I like about PBS. However, I don't think that is the intent of the new head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Did you read Rich's article?
Brian [27 June 2005 09:36 AM]
Lola,
With all due respect what you are saying has been the battle cry of the ultra-right wing for quite a while. And it is not true. One of the founding mandates for PBS was to give a voice to those who wouldn't have one otherwise. Also, I have a feeling that if flipped your tv channels around you will find your "viewpoint" quite well represented.
At least in my neck-of-the-woods most (80-90%) of the programming is educational. And the shows with a political leaning are pretty well broken down, 50-50 left-right.
We are not all going to agree on what the government should be spending money on but I personally feel this attack on PBS by the "right"
is an attempt to shove their views down our collective throats.
pb [27 June 2005 10:47 AM]
I agree with Lola that PBS and NPR are left of center and should be more balanced. Whether they are more left than Fox is right is at least arguable if not accurate.
I think both have a place in our society as a means to get less commercial fare on the airwaves but they really need to be less political.
scrubber [27 June 2005 11:13 AM]
Fox is private. I can choose to contribute to them or not.
PBS is largely public, funded in part by me.
Propaganda aside (from either), PBS is the caboose of our generation. We have 600+ channels on TV now, many of which contain comparable quality content. That PBS still lives off taxpayer funds bears little difference to trains pulling cabooses... it serves little use, but we wouldn't want to throw the employees off the tracks.
PBS received $200M from McD's and has great potential for running on its own merits as its own network. If they choose to stay on the public dole, and yes it is a choice, then their consequences are at the will of the party in power. If they fear those politics infecting their beliefs or self-ascribed version of objectivity, they have every right to try it on their own and without my tax dollars paying for part of it.
Jason Kratz [27 June 2005 11:25 AM]
"If you don't like the show, change the channel."
As if that were a real solution to the problem of honest and fair reporting on television.
"I think both have a place in our society as a means to get less commercial fare on the airwaves but they really need to be less political."
As another poster pointed out most of the timeslots on PBS are either educational or entertainment. The majority of the broadcasting is *not* political by any means. I live in a major market of one of the biggest PBS stations and that is true here as well.
I'm all for equal time when my taxes are being used to create and broadcast the material. Thankfully PBS is very good about showing both sides of the issue and have done so more consistently than any other news organization.
Where is my choice about whether my tax money should be spent on the propaganda pieces that are being pawned off as "news pieces" by the current administration? I'd be curious to know Lola's take on that issue if indeed she has one.
Mike Perry [27 June 2005 02:15 PM]
"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. "
To a carpenter every problem looks like a nail. To a leftist who has long enjoyed tax-payer subsidized propaganda from his point of view (particularly NPR), any action by Republicans is an attempt to create a "state propaganda machine." The idea that anyone thinks the government shouldn't be funding news operations at all is unimaginable. The most obvious of questions--how Bush & Co. could create such a machine by cutting OFF funding for PBS/NPR--is beyond him.
It's yet another sad indication of just how wide our cultural divide is. We not only have differing points of view, we live in different worlds. In the liberal world, a select few tell the rest how to think. Seven elderly lawyers define a baby in a womb as 'not a baby' and we're all expected to go along with the lie. Liberals do, the rest of us don't. Different worlds.
--Mike Perry, editor Eugenics and Other Evils
Kevin Ollivier [27 June 2005 11:03 PM]
It's yet another sad indication of just how wide our cultural divide is. We not only have differing points of view, we live in different worlds. In the liberal world, a select few tell the rest how to think.
Let me ask you - how many sources do you look to for your news? Or anyone else in this discussion, which sources do you turn to for your news?
If it's less than three, you're getting a vast majority of your news from a small group of individuals whose editorial decisions influence the news you see, and therefore influence your view of the world. It doesn't even matter if they're trying their best to be fair - every editorial decision they make is affected by who they are.
Actually, the sad thing is that people today *can* just turn the channel when their world view is challenged. Any viewer can just say "bah, stupid liberal. I'm not even going to listen to what they have to say. I'll go listen to the conservative editoral about what the liberal had to say." And vice-versa for conservatives. *That* act is what is tearing the US apart - a lessening desire to understand each other. When the various peoples and groups in this country no longer try to listen to each other, guess what, eventually we *are* living in different worlds.
But think about something, by saying "liberals and the rest of us", aren't you in fact promoting the idea of seeing the world as warring groups characterized by pre-defined positions and viewpoints? Aren't you just taking granted they exist based on some news programs rather than really taking a look around you? How do you know all liberals think alike? Have you asked them all? Do all conservatives think alike, is that where the idea came from?
Think about what Karl Rove said about liberals wanting to give terrorists 'therapy' shortly after 9-11 and contrast that with the nigh unanimous vote to go in Afghanistan. We weren't very divided then, were we? But apparently someone wants us to think we were.
I don't want us to be divided. In fact, we can't afford to be divided. As some wise men once said a long time ago, "United we stand, divided we fall". But we can't be united if we just say we're not going to compromise on anything and we're not going to listen to anyone we "don't like". Kinda what's happening with PBS, isn't it?
Ed Campbell [28 June 2005 07:48 AM]
I see comments, here, by Republikans, not Republicans. Because Right Wing nutcases have captured the GOP is little reason to accede to their crap.
Fortunately, 87 Republicans turned their butts to face the White House and the Rove-ers and paid attention to the mandate and history of PBS and NPR.
Of course, the political wonder of mid-term elections in the offing may have supplied some small measure of backbone. Responding to an electorate's needs rather than reactionary ideology [and deceit] probably will be allowed some role in the lead-up to 2006 elections.
Flüge [25 November 2008 04:18 AM]
^^Well said Ed! Although I do not back your use of the English language, I totally agree with your conclusions.