In defense of PBS - Public Broadcasting Service - Column

Christian Century, July 5, 1995 by William F. Fore

PUBLIC BROADCASTING was a Johnny-come-lately to the American scene, partly because the U.S. never had the equivalent of a BBC. When broadcasting developed in the 1920s, the British saw it as so important that it had to be separated from church, state and the workings of the marketplace. Accordingly, citizens paid a license fee directly to an "outside corporation," the BBC, thus preventing Parliament or anyone else from exercising program control.

In the U.S., Congress created a completely commercial system from the very beginning, rejecting proposals to designate frequencies for noncommercial groups and allowing broadcasters to charge what the traffic would bear for carrying commercials. The frequencies were simply given to stations for nothing, which was like giving them the right to mine gold on public lands. It was a gigantic and permanent public subsidy for commerical broadcasters, since the frequencies were (and according to the Supreme Court, still are) acknowledged to be common public property.

While there was plenty of political rhetoric about requiring broadcasters to serve the public interest in exchange for broadcast licenses, the requirement was never enforced. And as broadcasters grew in economic and political power during the '30s, the willingness and finally the ability of Congress to enforce the public-interest requirements diminished until, like the Cheshire cat's grin, it became nothing at all.

By the '60s, however, TV game-show scandals and the public's growing perception of TV as a "vast wasteland" set the stage for change. Lyndon Johnson was a staunch supporter of education, and several states had developed large public educational radio and TV systems. In 1968 Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act. He thought of it as an educational tool. Others, including the Carnegie Commission, realized that it created a national communication system that could counterbalance commercial broadcasting and provide the kind of robust discussion impossible in a commercially driven system.

But Congress and Johnson made a fatal mistake. When they established the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to insulate public radio and TV from political pressures, they failed to guarantee insulated funding. As a public-interest representative involved in the creation of the Public Broadcasting Act, I remember the anguish we felt at failing to get through Congress a 5 percent tax on TV and radio sets--something like the gasoline tax for roads which was protected from congressional raiding. The tax was defeated largely because labor unions objected that it was regressive--it taxed the poor relatively more than the rich. This objection played into the hands of those who did not want a strong alternative to commercial broadcasting.

Since then, every presidential administration and Congress has attempted to slash funding, primarily because public television--the Public Broadcasting Service--and National Public Radio would not go along to get along. Richard Nixon was particularly vexed that he could not control such documentaries as "The Banks and the Poor," which revealed how banks' lending policies were increasing people's impoverishment.

Two years after the creation of CPB, Nixon instructed his staff to see to it that "all funds for public broadcasting be cut immediately." His veto reduced congressional funding of CPB, thereby forcing public broadcasters into the arms of major corporations. Ever since, public radio and television have been more dependent on the largesse of some of the world's richest corporations--whose goals have more to do with burnishing their public images than with serving the public interest.

The percentage of public television's budget that comes from the federal government fell from 26 percent in 1980 to 16 percent in 1990, while corporate funding increased from 11 percent to 17 percent. Pressures to commercialize public broadcasting continue and have created a classic Catch-22. If PBS and NPR were to depend entirely on congressional support, they would be out of business. But if they accept commercial sponsors and grovel through public "pledge weeks," then they are accused of selling out. They are damned if they do, defunct if they don't.

Even this dismal situation has turned out to be relatively good news. The really bad news is that Newt Gingrich and company are not satisfied with emasculating the public broadcasting system. They want none at all. In January the Washington Post quoted Gingrich as saying that public broadcasting is a "sandbox for the rich" which should not be paid for by "poor workers." Gingrich told GOP staffers: "I don't know why they call it public broadcasting. As far as I am concerned, there's nothing public about it; it's an elitist enterprise." As for his own intentions: "CPB still hasn't seen the light.... They still don't realize that the appropriation is gone, that the game is over.... The power of the speaker is the power of recognition, and I will not recognize any proposal that will appropriate money for the CPB."