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.
