By Joseph Farah

Joseph Farah

For over 40 years, public broadcasting in the United States has been a political battleground between conservatives and liberals. At issue has been the never-ending quest for substantial federal funding to make public broadcasting work as it was intended for the majority of American citizens and not just for the few.

Conservatives argue that the federal government should not fund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR). They say that if the cultural elites (liberals) want to have their own media network, let them compete in the marketplace like everyone else and not depend on the largess of the federal government. The conservative mantra, unsubstantiated by any serious, unbiased research, is that public broadcasting in particular, and the media in general, are controlled by a cabal of leftists with an un-American agenda reflected in the liberal slant of journalists and certain left-leaning on-air personalities.

Liberals, on the other hand, argue that public broadcasting is part of the commonwealth of virtually all industrialized countries. The citizens in these lands gladly pay some form of tax for high-quality, nationally-produced programming free of crass commercialism and independent of the constant pressures for audience ratings. Liberals further argue that the airwaves belong to the public and should be at least partially protected from corporate exploitation. Finally, liberals counter the elite argument put forward by conservatives by noting that it is the conservative establishment, now solidified into a handful of major corporate conglomerates, who own and control the media, and who exert political influence in vast disproportion to their numbers.

The flammable Culture Wars rhetoric of the last 15 years has only intensified this polarization. There has been a rise in the number of watchdog groups who monitor bias, alleged or otherwise, in the media. These groups are organized along distinct ideological, political and even religious lines and try to alert and influence the citizenry of media shortcomings when it comes to interpreting or advancing their agenda. Public broadcasting exists within this unfortunate cultural context.

Given the mega-mergers of media corporations, the growth of cable television and the Internet, cutbacks in federal funding for cultural activities, including public broadcasting, and the continuing right-wing attack on secular culture, the traditional model of an independent public broadcasting entity, insulated from political harassment as envisioned by its founders, has given way to its “corporatization.”

This expanding corporatization has spilled over into the political process. Political fund-raising is now simply a conduit for rich benefactors to funnel their financial support to candidates who then funnel it directly into television advertising, bypassing any accountability for meaningful debate. The recent 2000 national elections illustrate how co-dependent the American political process and corporate power have become. No money, no media — and with no media, there is no possible chance of winning.

This issue is also at the core of the current national debate about Campaign Finance Reform. The net result of this increased corporatization has been increasing political deception, leading to greater civic indifference and the decline of serious journalism into what some critics call “infotainment.” When the average profit margin of local television news is 40 percent, who is going to stand up for the public good?

Despite the growth and spread of media and new technologies throughout American culture, there are still vast segments of the population that are grossly underrepresented in the commercial media and, unfortunately, in public broadcasting as well.

Sociologist-author Dr. Jerold M. Starr has outlined this issue in his book Air Wars: The Fight to Reclaim Public Broadcasting, which is a case study of his experiences in dealing with an elitist and incompetent board of directors for PBS television stations WQED and WQEX in Pittsburgh.

Starr’s attempt to try to get genuine public representation at these Pittsburgh stations led him to form, along with a group of influential social and media critics, the Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting (CIPB) to try and revive the original spirit and mission of public broadcasting. His efforts have sparked the beginning of a growing national debate on the role of public broadcasting in America. CIPB is currently organizing chapters across the country to try to refocus public broadcasting on its original roots.

According to Starr, public broadcasting is a precious cultural resource for all citizens, not just a small segment of the cultural and corporate elite. Since its formation only 15 months ago, nine major regional chapters of the CIPB have been formed around the United States with several more in the pipeline, including Indianapolis. An Indianapolis chapter of the Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting will try to address the issue of true representation of all segments of our community. Even with today’s massive proliferation of media technology, many legitimate groups remain marginalized or excluded because they lack the economic power and other resources to communicate with a mass audience.

Starr addresses the money-and-power issue in Air Wars, suggesting that the federal public broadcasting structure be reconfigured as an independently funded Public Broadcasting Trust (PBT) of at least $1 billion insulated from other levels of state and local operational support. This would force the highly politicized CPB and NPR out of the funding cookie jar and go a long way toward restoring public broadcasting’s integrity, breaking its incestuous affair with corporate America.

My personal dream is to have an adequately funded public broadcasting system, free from the obnoxious, intrusive and often vulgar on-air fund drives in which I am guilty of participating. With the majority of national public opinion in favor of a federally supported public broadcasting system, the system’s architects, planners and caretakers need to do better than to come up with another ridiculous premium to entice us to buy what we are already willing to pay for in taxes.

jfarah@nuvo.net

For further information about the national CIPB, visit their Web site at www.cipbonline.org. For information about the formation of the Indianapolis chapter of CIPB, or how you or your group can participate locally, visit the Common Bonds Web site at www.commonbonds.org and click onto the Participating Individuals and Organizations directory.