PBS DISCRIMINATES AGAINST ALTERNATIVE VIEWS.
Safe Programming Welcome, Controversy Discouraged.

Jerold M. Starr is executive director of Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting, a grassroots campaign to improve broadcasting. He is also, professor of Sociology at West Virginia University

This is the third in a series of essays. Links to the first two installments are posted at the bottom of this page.

Speaking to a law school audience recently, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor warned:  "We're likely to experience more restrictions on our personal freedom than has ever been the case in our country." Indeed, media figures already had been hammered for speaking their minds.

When late-night comic TV host, Bill Maher suggested: "We have been the cowards, lobbying cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away, "Sears and FedEx lifted their sponsorship from his program and Citadel Communications, with ABC affiliates in three cities, cancelled it. Maher publicly apologized, but to make certain the point was not lost, White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer intoned: "Americans ... need to watch what they say and watch what they do."

CBS anchor Dan Rather knows the drill. Reflecting soon after on the closely controlled major media coverage of the Gulf War, he conceded that "too often" the media act like "lapdogs" rather than "watchdogs." However, days after the September 11 terrorist attack, Rather told David Letterman: "George Bush is the president, he makes the decisions, and, you know, as just one American, he wants me to line up, just tell me where."

It is times like these that Americans need a truly independent public broadcasting service. In fact, PBS was launched in 1967 for the express purpose of compensating for the "limitations" of advertiser-driven media and balancing the voices of those in power with those of "groups not normally heard." Tragically, while PBS stands in for this ideal, in practice it falls well short.

Corporate sponsorship leads PBS to feature "safe programming" -- nature and how-to shows.

While 75 percent of public broadcast funding comes from the public in one form or another, corporations are the single largest source of underwriting for programs. This has two consequences. One is a paucity of news and public affairs. As WGBH's Victoria Devlin once observed: "Corporations are not big risk-takers when there's perceived controversy." The result, TV critic Marc Gunther points out, is an overabundance of "safe programming," like "nature and science" and "how-to" shows.

The second consequence is that what news and public affairs there is tends to be as conservative as one would find on the commercial networks. Take the nightly "NewsHour" with Jim Lehrer. The show is two-thirds owned by AT&T and, over the years has been sponsored by several large corporations. Lehrer claims: "We try very hard to represent all of the relevant positions ... on any given issue as best as we can."

However, research by Vassar College Professor William Hoynes found that all public interest group advocates combined accounted for a mere six percent of "NewsHour" guests. In 1995, anticipating his retirement, former "NewsHour" co-host Robert MacNeill acknowledged, "We [at PBS] are not as provocative, innovative, creative or original as we should be."

The PBS green light to corporate and conservative foundation underwriting and ban on labor and public interest group funding amounts to a de facto censorship.

To make matters worse, PBS systematically bans independent productions that receive even partial support from labor or public interest groups. PBS claims this is necessary to avoid the "perception," however unfounded, that the program content might have been influenced by its funding. Examples of such discrimination are legion, but two should make clear how rigidly this dictum is enforced.

In 1997, PBS was scheduled to air "Out at Work," an award-winning documentary about three lesbian and gay workers' struggle for justice and dignity in the workplace. PBS suddenly cancelled, claiming it discovered that 23 percent of the film's modest $65,000 budget came from such "problematical" sources as a lesbian action foundation and some labor unions. One of the film's directors, Kelly Anderson, said: "None of the funders in question gave more than $5,000 to the project, and most gave $1,000 or less."

PBS official Sandy Heberer insisted: "PBS guidelines prohibit funding that might lead to an assumption that individual underwriters might have exercised editorial control over program content even if, as is clear in this case, those underwriters did not." Journalists James Ledbetter asked PBS official Barry Chase if this decision meant that a labor union could never fund any program on public television that had to do with issues of the workplace. Chase replied: "Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying." However, corporations have been allowed to sponsor programs that featured their products. Financial institutions sponsor business news; in fact, "Wall Street Week" host Louis Rukeyser even has interviewed analysts touting certain companies with which they had an undisclosed financial relationship.

In 1994, PBS refused to air "Defending Our Lives," winner of the Academy Award for "Best Documentary Short." The film critically examines the problem of battered women. PBS turned it down on the grounds that one of the producers was a member of a nine-member prison support group concerned with the issue. The producers said the woman neither funded, profited from nor controlled the film, but PBS said the "perception" that shows are being "created to advance the aims of [a] group" is "as important as the fact."

In contrast, earlier this year former CBS and ABC news correspondent Jerry Landay revealed that three conservative foundations -- Bradley, Olin and Scaife -- subsidized at least 17 single programs or series on PBS from 1992 through 2000. All the programs served as "a platform for the views" of the foundations' grantees and their organizations. These included a program on "scientific creationism," another that blamed lack of self-reliance for problems in the ghetto, an attack on "political correctness" based on alleged "reenactments," a three-part series on the "gender wars," dominated by anti-feminist voices and a debate on "school choice" with 38 of 42 guests supporting public funding of private schools. Not only did these shows air, but there was no public acknowledgement of PBS violation of the "perception" guideline.

The PBS green light to corporate and conservative foundation underwriting and ban on labor and public interest group funding amounts to a de facto censorship of program content. As if to make certain, PBS also invokes a "balance and objectivity" standard for programs with a critical message that manage to find funds from "disinterested" sources. This standard has nothing to do with the separate questions of fairness, accuracy or truth. Such criteria are important and can be respected through a case-by-case editorial review, as is standard practice in the academic world.

As with the funding standard, the balance standard is applied selectively. Vermont Congressman Bernie Sanders' documentary on American socialist Eugene V. Debs was rejected by every station he went to on the grounds that it didn't show both sides. Sanders reflected: "I gather they wanted a plug for capitalism. Can you imagine if I had done a film celebrating the accomplishments of John D. Rockefeller or Henry Ford -- those stations would never have insisted on hearing the socialist side. They would never have complained about objectivity."

From Nixon to Reagan to Gingrich, conservative political officials have used the power of the purse to intimidate PBS.

The source of this bias is patently clear. From Nixon to Reagan to Gingrich, conservative political officials have used the power of the purse to intimidate PBS into making significant concessions in its programming. In 1993, former PBS President Ervin Duggan stated revealingly that balance across the schedule was not sufficient. Failure to provide balance within all programs "would cause the debate" (read conservative attack) over "fairness in broadcasting" to "erupt again, threatening the enterprise."

The political officials policing PBS represent corporations and conservative groups who have no problem with censorship. Liberals, on he other hand, have deliberately avoided any comments on programming. As a consequence, the pressure only comes from one side. In Landay's view, PBS "should reflect the totality of American political thought." He recommends: "Balance and objectivity, 'a political bludgeon, must be replaced with the guiding principle of 'representative access." This, in fact, is policy in the U.K., Netherlands and other democracies that support their own public broadcasting systems.

Unfortunately, the only way this will ever happen is if the United States follows the lead of the other democracies and provides independent funding for public broadcasting; giving if the financial security required for journalistic integrity. Opening up the PBS National Program Service is only half the battle, however. Since PBS member stations have final control over their broadcast schedule, a more democratic service requires change at that level as well. Local stations must move away from the commercial culture that has taken root; away from ratings, focus groups, branding and merchandising and toward authentic community responsiveness.

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