BIG BIRD OR BIG BROTHER?
The media are only as liberal as the conservative businesses that own them. But is the government's Public Broadcasting System different? According to James Ledbetter in Made Possible By: The Death of Public Television in the United States, the public does not own public television. Both political parties and corporate forces have manipulated public media into conveying their message. For example, The News Hour, a PBS staple, refused to address allegations of impropriety by Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) or note that it is the single largest recipient of "corporate welfare." During the Exxon Valdez disaster, PBS news coverage spun the issue to suit Exxon's perspective.
Right wing accusations of liberal bias stem from an inaccurate perception of social issue coverage . . . and fail to assess the insidious control that the government and corporate underwriters have over economic issue coverage. Following simple logic, no corporation or government directly involved in the financial doings of public broadcasting will allow footage to air that exposes their shortcomings. "Public broadcasters," Ledbetter writes, "quite naturally perceive underwriting as an essential form of support. It is also, however, an inevitable censor."
But what about all that liberal programming? Ledbetter's research indicates that public broadcasting does not, by and large, air liberal social interpretations. While some glimmers have shown on the air, two issues illustrate PBS's overall conservatism: race and homosexuality. In the 1970s, conservative critics denounced what they viewed as "biased" racial coverage in PBS broadcasting. But while programs such as Soul! in the 1970s reflected the social situation of African Americans in the United States, many PBS stations refused to air it.
Today, homophobic rancor characterizes right wing charges of "bias," exemplified by Senator Bob Dole's accusation that PBS "apologists are hiding behind Big Bird, Mister Rogers, and Masterpiece Theatre, laying down their quality smokep;screen while they shovel out funding for gay and lesbian shows, all those doom and gloom reports about what is wrong with America, and all the other liberal cheerleading we see on public television."
Turning to the facts, "in 1997, PBS refused to accept a documentary for the P.O.V. series about gays and lesbians in the workplace solely because labor unions had been prominent funders." As Ledbetter demonstrates, "public television doesn't scare its viewers because public television avoids just about everything that might offend anyone."
How did we get here? The seeds of public television's corruption existed at its inception. As early as the 1960s, social critics decried advertisement-driven television as an intellectual wasteland. In response, following the Carnegie Commisp;sion's report, "Public Television: A Program for Action," which advocated a publicly funded network to fill the programming void, Congress passed the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act. But it left out one crucial part of the plan: a funding mechanism that would shield PBS from direct government control. The miserly funding apparatus that Congress provided opened the door to corporate "sponsorship" of programming, discussed below. Just as bad, control over the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the advisory board for the Service, was originally placed in the hands of President Johnson--ironically to remove it from partisan congressional influence. It remains under presidential control today. These two factors of control and a perpetual funding crisis ensure public broadcasting's compliance with conservative inclinations.
Though the Johnson administration made forays into controlling public broadcasting, the media-paranoid Nixon took up in earnest the strong-arming of PBS. Zeroing in on what his advisors dubbed "anti-administration" reporting, the Nixon administration "learned to flex its ultimate power by shuffling appointments to the CPB Board." Nixon also spearheaded budget cuts to bring PBS into line. Scrambling for funds, the vulnerable stations gladly took succor from where they found it: corporate underwriters. Ledbetter notes that while corporations have underwritten public broadcasts prior to the advent of PBS, corporate funding increased 163% after Nixon jeopardized its budget. Employing a more "subtle" form of advertising, oil giants such as Shell, Mobil, and Exxon bought their way into a pivotal position in public broadcasting. Agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland touts itself as "supermarket to the world" on public television and on NPR.
These corporate giants funded educational/cultural programming before branching into news journalism. Greenpeace indicts the oil giants and other multinational corporate sponsors of PBS for doing a "polluter's 'penance'." Alignment with highbrow entertainment distracts the attention of the largely educated audience of this type of programming from corporate sins.
Corporate penance masks the most treacherous element of underwriting: the silence that it buys. For example, the Gulf-Western conglomerate yanked funding from Hungry for Profit, an expose of the agribusiness industry.
In the Reagan era, corporate sponsorship united with attempts at a "content review" program through which Reagan CPB appointees filtered out programming inconsistent with their agenda. Often, they used the Cold War "national security" excuse to silence programming counter to their views. Although rightists demonize biased programming, outright propaganda films in keeping with their own biases, like Let Poland be Poland aired with the administration's blessing.
The ever-rightward leaning of PBS in the 1980s and 1990s did not stop conservative attempts to end public broadcasting. Although House Speaker Newt Gingrich huffed and puffed in 1995, his attempts to blow PBS down did not succeed. Indeed, Ledbetter holds out hope for the salvation of public television based on a seven-point program:
1. Resist the corporate takeover;
2. Liberate the CPB from direct presidential control;
3. Democratize the boards of local stations;
4. Cut back spending on children's programming. (Notes Ledbetter: "The nation's educational system would be better served if the money for a season's worth of Barney . . . were spent on a two-hour public television documentary showing the appalling conditions that prevail in [many] public schools." );
5. Restore public broadcasting's mandate for minority and other underserved audiences;
6. Encourage more independents by providing more funding;
7. Make public broadcasting more accountable by creating offices much like the ombudsmen positions at many newspapers.
--These facts come from Made Possible By: The Death of Public Broadcasting in the United States by James Ledbetter.
Winter 2000
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