If you read the comments on this blog, you'll remember that a short while ago there was a bit of conversation about Public broadcasting and the Republican antipathy toward it. Does the relatively small financial support PBS gets from the Federal government really create a risk of bias in news reporting? Is that risk countered by the absence of pressure for ratings? Has the government censured PBS for contradicting the President? Perhaps this is one of these arguments argued from 'principle' rather than from experience, because experience is other than is predicted by theory. Is the test in how well facts fit the theory or in how much the theory fits you?
I can easily remember, having spent many hours as a boy listening to programming from Radio Moscow during the Cold War, and to US and European based propaganda stations, just what propaganda looks like. It doesn't look like the McNeil Lehrer News Hour. It looks more like a panel of out of work politicians giggling and speculating and providing no facts. It looks like talking for weeks about every last rivet and piece of upholstery on a Boing 777 just to keep you watching, about speculating on what a shooting means until it means nothing or everything.
Looking back at the world of 60 years ago, I've had to admit that although grossly exaggerated, some criticism of the US was true, but really, the Soviet news agencies, owned and operated and with scripted "news" reports that praised them and assaulted us can't be compared to a network that spends a few hours a day reporting events and the bulk of it's time with educational programming. In principle, yes, one must suspect government news releases as much as one must suspect the corporate news releases like the ads and articles that tell you Toyota Camrys are wildly exiting vehicles for loveable rogues and 4 door Nissans can't be distinguished from race cars. Can we compare how well the various sources do that? The "independent" sources seem more about speculation and conjecture disguised as "telling both sides" and about fewer stories. PBS tends to stick to reportage, in my opinion anyway. In all these years I don't remember any PBS stories about Saginaw Michigan outlawing Christmas, the sort of thing that's daily fare at a certain "independent" News company. They have refrained from suggesting that not only is Ebola not Pandemic in the US, but speculating that Obama is in favor of it or even now that all proof is visible that Obama is not from Kenya. Is it bias to refrain from Swift Boat Stories or is it "just the facts ma'am?
To Quote the fictional Dr. Gregory House: "everyone lies" and as we all know, the wheels of commerce and the gears of government are greased with Bullshit.
But do we leave it at that: the suspicion that the McNeill Lehrer Report is government supported propaganda while "independent" MSNBC is owned by the Democrats because they don't report things Obama is not guilty of, while Fox, their endless speculations and conjectures, their well documented fabrications, false statistics and scurrilous attacks on Liberal principle can be trusted?
Is CNN really so financially independent that it can avoid obsessive sensationalism while ignoring the important events of the day, that they can resist publishing Apple press releases as news? My answer is brought to you by the letter N, which stands for NO. Everyone lies or at least everyone has their frame of reference when they get fare enough away from saying it rained this morning or a bomb went off in Boston. The rest is politics and advertising - and sometimes lies.
I fear the argument against PBS usually stops with the theoretical because, as with so many arguments, the facts don't support the arguments for bias and in fact many of those arguments don't really support the sanity of the proponents. Are the Teletubbies really trying to make your kids gay? or are you a crackpot? Is Sesame Street radicalizing your kids or are you an extremist loonie? Are McNeil and Lehrer covering up for Obama's secret agenda just as they covered up Clinton's secret plan to turn the US military over to NATO? Are they being biased by failing to provide "fair and balanced" coverage of all those Fox Fables that never happened, like Obama's blocking of white voting rights, lack of a US birth certificate, that Home Depot has given up selling Christmas trees ( go look for yourself ) or that the Post Office forbids the use of the word God on their premises? Or is all that harder to establish than that Charles Krauthammer is a pathological and irresponsible liar who makes up statistics. Will any of the independents spend a moment proving that wrong -- oh excuse me, MSNBC provided proof, thus showing their bias no doubt.
They're all biased in some eyes and to those visionaries who think their personal interests trump the national interest. Ask yourself how much coverage PBS gave to the Malaysian airliner or to the two US cases of ebola relative to the 18 to 20 hours a day of all the "independent" news sources? Who made it all about blaming it on their political enemies? And who was it that tried to blame Obama for failing to have a Surgeon General or an "Ebola Czar" after obstructing his every effort to appoint one? It wasn't MSNBC with their alleged ownership by the Democratic Party, or CNN with their corporate puppet strings firmly attached, it was Fox with their heavy financial relationship with the GOP. It was not PBS.
To me, and of course that's only my opinion because I don't have the patience to write the thousand page list of irrefutable acts of dishonest propagandizing in the various news outlets: to me the heaviest and smelliest load of that universal lubricant is produced by the segment of the political right that worries about PBS being a government news outlet out to steal your money, to put you in a FEMA camp, import indigent colored people into your living room and outlaw your religion. If I can indulge in an analogy, it's like the people who support the destruction of a river because they profit from it but want to fine you for leaving a cigarette butt on the ground because they don't -- on principle, of course. Principle is important.
PBS is fine with me. I don't think taxpayers should be forced to pay for it. Or for Fox News for that matter. The "Corporation for Public Broadcasting", like any corporation, shouldn't receive any corporate welfare.
ReplyDeleteThree-fifths of the Earth is covered by water. Yet, for decades, global media has ignored our denizens of the deep. This terrible injustice is about to change. Your intrepid Octopus is pleased to announce the launch of the Trans-Oceanic News Service covering late breaking news and events from the seven seas. From bottom-feeders to Ballyhoo, here you will find everything fishy and slimy in the best traditions of journalism.
DeleteI'm with you on corporate welfare, unless perhaps it's support of some infrastructure that promotes business opportunities. I am of course forced to pay for Fox if I want to get HBO and most of my Satellite bill seems to go to to professional sports coverage that I don't watch. That bill. of course is hugely larger than the few pennies of my Federal Taxes earmarked for Sesame Street.
DeleteCapitalism tends toward monopoly and fewer choices. The larger the political power of corporations and the people who run them, the faster the process.
A few years back, there was a Republican sponsored move to "privatize" the National Weather Service and make us pay for our weather reports. Only private industry like "Accuweather" would get the information free so they could sell it to us. These attempts seem to me to be very much akin to the attempt to get rid of public broadcasting appealing to our sense of economy to force us to pay more for less.
And I will also point out that our massive debt problem is made up of so much pure waste like this...a billion here and a billion there of pet projects/etc that is considered to be "relatively small" by those who defend it. And it all adds up....
ReplyDeleteI used to donate to PBS voluntarily, yearly, until I realized that I am paying for it whether I want to or not.I will likely resume once the unwarranted forced contributions end.
I forgot to mention: Our maiden voyage will be anchored by Avery Amoeba - a perfect choice for advocates of limited government. Here is a single cellular newscaster with no organ systems, no heart, no lungs, no spleen, and no bureaucracy. What could be simpler?
DeleteYour donation of sand dollars will help fund this vital programming. Can we count on your support?
Whether or not PBS is needed, it's really the issue of bias I'm addressing. I simply see no evidence for that, in a time where bias is everywhere and to the point where politically motivate lies are given currency.
DeleteThe Koch brothers' contributions to it have given them powers to "pull" documentaries they don't like and they are only one of many huge corporate donors that arrived to fill in the gap left when the government support was slashed. If there is bias at PBS and at CNN (and there is) I would follow the money to its source. In fact with media consolidation running along on schedule we may get only the news big money wants us to get, that big religion allows us to get and news that supports the politicians owned by big money want.
Are you comfortable with a system that has no balance against a policy of "only the news that's profitable and politically expedient to print? "
And is that small contribution, mostly spent so that people in rural areas who can't afford cable can get PBS educational programming off the air, really without due benefit? An informed electorate being the element that makes Democracy possible, I'm truly worried about how we get our information and from whom.
I would like to add something profound here. But after reading these comments and contemplating on them a due amount of time I realized there wasn't much I could add.
DeleteExcept to say until the majority realizes they are being played not much is going to change.
RN: “… until the majority realizes they are being played not much is going to change.”
DeleteThis statement captures my thinking as well, especially with regard to the following:
In an Associated Press report today (Oct 23, 2014 - 5:04 AM) - unbeknownst to voters – millions of dollars paid for ballot measures have been funded by large corporations and advocacy groups. These measures are not necessarily in the public interest; all too many of these initiatives defend or expand the business interests of companies that front the money – such as Coca Cola, Monsanto, Exxon-Mobil, as examples.
Coca Cola, Monsanto, Pepsi, and Smucker are spending $3 million to oppose a ballot measure in Oregon that would require vendors to label genetically modified foods.
In Colorado, a ballot measure that would expand gambling to horse tracks is backed by Twin Rivers Casino, a corporation based in Rhode Island.
There are local ordinances that allow food service employees to stay home and recover from colds and flu - thus reducing public health risks. Yet ALEC (representing the business interests of Darden in particular) has successfully introduced boilerplate legislation that overturns such ordinances by giving veto power to state governments. Home rule by local government used to be considered a democratic virtue – until local ordinances come into conflict with corporate interests.
One of the most secretive closely-held corporations for decades, Koch Industries has suddenly come out of the closet with a spate of new TV ads. Why? Advertisers influence news content, and Koch Industries wants to control network news with their advertising dollars.
These days, I hold MORE DISTRUST for Corporate America than I have for government. The idea of rogue politicians passing repressive laws that take away our rights and freedoms stills holds true; but the power behind these politicians is more likely to be a corporation. Theoretically at least, our system of government has built-in checks and balances; supposedly an electorate that can “throw the bums out” anytime. In corporate boardrooms, there are no checks and balances – merely a clique that meets in secret and plots strategy to maximize the bottom line.
The greatest danger to democracy, in my opinion, is not Ebola or ISIS or even the Cringe Fringe and their nihilists of nullification: Rather the invisible hand of corporations and secret PAC money. Regardless of political persuasion, I hope we can find common cause and help raise public awareness.
Amen, ditto and can I get a witness to all of the above, and again, it's all fed and supported by the entertainment/news that steers our thinking and steers it away from being critical. Our government, our culture and even our language is biased in favor of consumerism and advancing the interests of the sellers.
DeleteWhen we wrote a constitution for this nation we attempted to separate the power of religious institutions from the power of government and I believe we also attempted to separate the power of money from political power, but to a lesser and less effective extent. this flaw may be tragic.
Controlling and limiting the power of a monied elite has been the backbone of progressive political thought at least since the Magna Carta. Fighting both these attempts at separation seems now to be the backbone of what passes for conservative thought which I see as not conservative but regressive and atavistic. Perhaps the people longing for neo-feudalism hope for a position of power in that recrudescence of a medieval order, but odds are serfdom would be the best they could hope for.
Is the finding of a common cause, the notion that we're all Americans here, deliberately stifled by the rage mongers with their various flocks? Does a Fox shit in the woods?
i have also to respond to the notion that our national debt is a mosaic of little bits of "waste" like spending for educational programming. It isn't. Is that explanation for the vehemence of opposition to it to be compared to a drop in an ocean of debt created by trying to pay for the longest and most expensive war in history by giving Warren Buffet historically low tax rates?
DeleteI know analogies aren't arguments but I have to think of the addict who blames his poverty on his wife's having fed the children.
"Follow the money" and neuter the beast it is feeding.
DeleteLabels have become my pet peeve of late. Perhaps it is because IMO they have been turned inside out, upside down, and in the process morphed into rather meaningless and useless. That and other than the truly shallow thinking, non inquisitive, conditioned sheeples most are a mixture of various political, economic, social, and faith based thought.
Seeing things through old paradigms are hard for many people to break free of, especially when there are so many reinforces of the old. "Follow the money."
Analogies can help some to see and understand the arguments better Captain.