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Blaming America First, Last, and Always
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20122 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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2 / 1992 |
3,818 Words |
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Joseph C. Goulden
Joseph C. Goulden, a veteran Washington writer, is director of
media analysis for Accuracy in Media. |
Public television was conceived three decades ago as a supposed tax-subsidized alternative to what Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton Minow called the "vast wasteland" of commercial TV. The idea was that programming not dependent upon mass audiences and ad dollars would have intellectual weight; control would be administered through local stations to ensure diversity.
In its first years, public television was a high-browed joke, a medium dominated by animal travelogues, weird chamber music, and nerdy professors. No more. Today it is a billion-dollar business, with a Washington-led bureaucracy that has made a profitable art form out of "uplift."
Appropriations for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the federal tax spigot for public TV and radio, increased from $20 million in fiscal 1970 to $327.3 million in fiscal 1990--400 percent in constant dollars. Corporations, foundations, and individual donors kicked in another $700-odd million. PBS even offers its own 40-page catalog of gifts for "fans and friends of public television," offering items ranging from Monty Python and Agatha Christie videos to Egyptian scarab earrings and massage oil.
During a recent fund-raising drive, WETA-TV, the Washington PBS outlet, gave viewers this ego stroking; "You're the sort of viewer who's not afraid of bold, socially relevant, thought-provoking programming."
So what do we get for our money? PBS brings us the Mac-Neill / Lehrer Report, admittedly several cuts above a commercial TV news show. We have the occasional symphony or opera, Masterpiece Theater, of course, and a surprising blockbuster series like The Civil War.
Things fall off in a hurry thereafter, particularly in the area of public affairs. I have watched PBS closely for more than two years as an analyst for Accuracy in Media. Its "documentary" programs flaunt the standards by which decent journalists work. PBS consistently violates both the intent and content of the Public Broadcasting Act, which requires that programs or series of programs dealing with controversial issues that are in whole or part federally funded be produced with strict adherence to objectivity and balance.
Several themes run through PBS programming. U.S. foreign policy is wicked. Our misguided leaders and the CIA were responsible for the Cold War. America has done nothing altruistic in
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