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When PBS Errs
| Article
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20121 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1992 |
1,092 Words |
| Author
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Don Ritter
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Over the years, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) have provided our country with a vast array of high quality entertainment and educational programs. Public television has also been at the forefront of technological innovation, such as distance learning, which through the combination of television, satellite, computer, videodisc, and telephone technologies, brings educational opportunities to students regardless of their geographic or economic situation.
For the most part, I think the funds Congress appropriates to CPB is money well spent. The programs produced by Children's Television Workshop, such as Sesame Street, played an important role in my own children's educational development. Over the years, my family and I have enjoyed watching programs such as Jewels in the Crown, Reilly, Ace of Spies, Smiley's People, The Civil War, and several other shows of a quality which is often not available on commercial television.
However, there is another side to this story. In recent years, I have become increasingly concerned over the lack of balance and objectivity in much of the public-affairs programming distributed by PBS. Indeed, on some very controversial political issues, PBS' programming policies have exhibited a distinct bias. This bias was most recently demonstrated in PBS' distribution of programming addressing the political "hot potato" issue of global warming.
Consistently Biased
PBS has consistently distributed programs which show only the doomful side of this controversy. Shows such as "After the Warming," "Global Change," and other, which PBS distributes to its member stations, give the American viewer only one side of the global warming issue--the alarmist point of view. PBS adamantly refuses to distribute shows devoted to the other side of the controversy, such as "The Greenhouse Conspiracy," a critically acclaimed documentary that questions the alarmist global warming theories that are the basis for programs distributed by PBS. And there are other documentaries that could be shown to present a balanced picture of this issue.
In fact, when PBS once again distributed "After the Warming" to its member stations last fall, the public television station in Washington, D.C., among others, recognizing that the program showed only one side of the controversy, went out and purchased "The Greenhouse Conspiracy" at their own expense and aired the show the same evening as
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