The Political
Threat to Public Broadcasting
The proposed elimination
of more than $100 million dollars from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
will have dire consequences for public radio and television stations across the
country. The House Appropriations
Subcommittee is expected to vote next week on these punitive cuts, and if the
Senate follows suit it would dramatically impact both Vermont Public Radio and
Vermont Public Television.
If the current cuts are
approved, the Community Service Grants that help fund local VPR productions
like Switchboard, Camels Hump Radio and regional news coverage as well
as help VPR to pay for programs like Morning Edition, All Things Considered,
Marketplace and other nationally produced shows will be reduced by about
40%. Vermont Public Television will feel the pain as well. Capital projects will
be slashed as well, such as the technology to enable digital radio, the
technology necessary for PBS to stay connected to the satellite system and most
critically the Ready to Learn programs which partially fund Sesame Street,
Dragon Tales and several other essential early learning programs.
The hardest hit,
however, will be the rural public broadcasters.
Their challenge is to maintain the infrastructure and programming staff
to cover vast and mountainous areas like Alaska,
Wyoming and New Mexico with sparse populations to
provide membership and donations. There is also concern that the stations
serving small minority populations, such as Native American and Hispanic stations
and historically black college stations, who have listeners, but little or no
economic base to provide support, will simply shut down.
Not only has the current
administration, by their own admission, hired adherents to pose as reporters,
bloggers and correspondents, they have supplanted CPB's professional managers
with administration ideologues. Kathleen Cox was summarily dismissed by CPB
Chairman Ken Tomlinson and replaced with Ken Ferree, formerly Michael Powell's
deputy at the FCC and architect of a plan to further deregulate media ownership
rules. When Ken Ferree visited VPR recently and met five of us, we had a frank
and open discussion about public broadcasting. But the political maneuvering at
the CPB has left a vacuum in leadership that is being exploited by the
Republicans in the House.
Although independent
polls have indicated a high degree of public trust in the public broadcasting
system, Tomlinson undertook several secret investigations into PBS and NPR
programming, the results of which have never been published. He is said to have
suggested that Fox News could teach NPR a thing or two about how to gather
news.
One indication of how
thoroughly Chairman Tomlinson misunderstands the principles of journalism is
his recent appointment of two CPB ombudsmen, one a strong conservative and good
friend of his and the other a liberal.
This sets up the very real specter of a funding agency making political
determinations on journalistic standards which cannot be compromised. If news is dubbed conservative or liberal, it
becomes neither. It is not news. The best news organizations simply adhere
rigorously to principles of journalism and need but one ombudsman to judge
their performance against principles, not competing ideologies.
The sad part about all
this is the gradual erosion of principles that Americans purport to hold
sacred. Our country was founded on the principle of a free press. It is vital
for any democracy to examine its principles and understand what they mean. A
free press is not governed by which party is in power. Legal protections were
encouraged to ensure that governments could not meddle with "free and open
expression." Public radio and TV have become a trusted part of our
democratic society and a critical source of independent information for
Vermonters. The political effort to reduce funding is a misguided and dangerous
effort.
Bill Schubart is former Chair
of Vermont Public Radio and currently serves on their Board
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