:
Subj:   PBS op-ed (fwd)
 
Date:         Sat, 28 Jan 1995 16:38:39 -0500
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From:         Carolyn Caywood <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      PBS op-ed (fwd)
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>From UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU!UAFSYSB.UARK.EDU!owner-amend1-l Sat Jan 28
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 1995
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Date:         Fri, 27 Jan 1995 16:49:25 -0500
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From:         Wally Bowen <[log in to unmask]>
Organization: University of North Carolina at Asheville
Subject:      PBS op-ed
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(Following is a draft op-ed on the public broadcasting debate by
Wally Bowen
of Citizens for Media Literacy in Asheville, N.C.  Comments would be
appreciated at <[log in to unmask]>.  Internet distribution is encouraged.
All
rights reserved.  For other publication, please contact the author.
Copyright
Wally Bowen 1995)
 
        Barney and Big Bird going head to head Jan. 19 with radical
right-wingers Reed Irvine and U.S. Sen. Larry Pressler was like
watching the
lambs of public broadcasting being led to the slaughter.
        Barney and Big Bird's defenselessness was underscored by the
total
silence of public broadcasting officials in rebutting the right-wing
charge of
liberal bias in PBS programming.
        Right-wing opponents of PBS enjoyed the best of both worlds.
By going
unchallenged, their charges of liberal bias gained credence.  By
arguing the
superiority of the commercial marketplace, they offered  "safe haven"
for
successful PBS creations like Big Bird and Barney.
        So it was no surprise to see Pressler's quick follow-up to
the  Jan.
19 hearing when he floated stories about media giants Bell Atlantic
and Jones
Intercable's interest in buying up parts of public broadcasting.
We'll hear
more from the media barons who would own PBS when Pressler's Senate
Commerce
Committee holds hearings in coming weeks.
        This push to privatize public broadcasting demands close
scrutiny.
It's clear that PBS made poor business decisions by not getting a
bigger cut of
the Barney and Big Bird's profits.  But allowing taxpayers to be
ripped off a
second time with a fire-sale give-away of valuable public assets
would only add
insult to injury.
        Who wins and who loses by privatizing PBS?  A little history
sheds
light on this question.
        During World War One, the U.S. government poured money and
talent into
perfecting a new media technology called radio.  Many returning
veterans with
"wireless" training helped spawn hundreds of radio stations across
America
during the post-war years.  By 1925, there were 128 college and
university
radio stations and a similar number of stations run by a variety of
non-profits, from farmer and labor organizations to religious and
civic groups.
        But a problem soon arose when the frequencies of the fast-
growing
commercial networks, NBC and CBS, began bumping into non-profit
frequencies.
Led by NBC, commercial broadcasters lobbied the Hoover administration
for
government regulation of the airwaves.
        This led to the creation of the Federal Radio Commission,
which NBC
and its allies packed with sympathetic attorneys and engineers.  In
1928, the
FRC issued a ruling which designated non-profits as "propaganda"
stations,
while commercial broadcasters were given the more benign label of
"general
service" stations.
        Not surprisingly, the FRC ruling favored "general service"
stations
whenever frequency disputes arose.  Drawn into lengthy and expensive
litigation, many non-profit stations were forced to shut down.  Most
of those
that survived ran head on into the Great Depression and died.
        The final nail in the coffin occurred in 1934, when the
networks and
their lobbying arm, the National Association of Broadcasters,
defeated a move
in Congress to set aside 20 percent of the public airwaves for non-
profit
stations.
        One of the key arguments against the 20 percent set-aside
came from
business elites who feared that non-profit radio would be used to
organize
farmers and the working classes.  They had reason to be concerned.
        One of the most prominent non-profit stations in the late
1920s was
Chicago's WCFL, the "Voice of Farmer-Labor."  Its news coverage from
the
perspective of working people led one Midwest business association to
issue
this dire warning:
 
        "Think of the speeches that may go forth.  Wild and radical
speeches
listened to by hundreds of thousands.  These wild men in their wild
talks
regardless of consequences, may reach the ear, possibly
inadvertently, of your
influential and trusted employee, who may be detracted from paths
favorable to
his employer's success."
 
        With this first attempt at "public" broadcasting successfully
defeated, the commercial networks went on to create the privatized
broadcasting
system we know today.  By the 1960s, however, the TV game-show
scandals and a
growing public perception of TV as "a vast wasteland" set the stage
for change.
 
        Following a major 1966 study commissioned by the Carnegie
Endowment,
Congress passed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967.  But one key
component of
the Carnegie study was missing:  Congress should insulate public
broadcasting
from political manipulation by providing an independent revenue
stream in the
form of a tax on the sale of radio, TVs, and broadcast licenses.
        President Lyndon Johnson supported the independent revenue
stream
idea, but the issue was tabled in order to get legislation passed
quickly.
Johnson believed Congress could amend the legislation the following
year, but
this was never done.
        By the early 1970s, President Richard Nixon and his fellow
conservatives were disgruntled over PBS documentaries such as "The
Banks and
the Poor," a critical look at how banks' lending policies helped keep
the urban
poor impoverished.  Hoping to avoid charges of censorship, Nixon
accused public
broadcasting of becoming too "centralized."
        So on June 30, 1972, Nixon vetoed Congress' funding of public
broadcasting, which was then forced to turn to major corporations --
mainly the
oil companies -- for support.
        What America witnessed Jan. 19, 1995, therefore, was the
latest twist
in the noose in a 75-year attack on public broadcasting.  Those who
would kill
public broadcasting today are direct descendants of the business
elites who saw
public media as a threat to their dominance of America's information
order.
(Is it just coincidence that no regular PBS program with a labor
perspective
ever emerged during the era of CPB's growing reliance on corporate
funding?)
        Now with a new information order being mapped out by today's
media
barons (men like cable TV's John Malone, the networks' Rupert Murdoch
and the
phone companies' Raymond Smith), the Republican Congress presents
another
historic opportunity to snuff out public-sector media.
        Unfortunately, those in a position to defend public
broadcasting today
are prohibited by conventional wisdom from placing the battle in an
historical
context of power relations between rich and poor, owners and workers.
        Today's "conservative correctness" defines the fault lines in
American
society along the axes of right and left, conservative and liberal,
terms whose
history seem to begin and end in the 1960s.  By contrast, in the
1920s, Edward
Nockels, station manager of WCFL, could make an analysis that would
be unheard
of in today's "conservatively correct" climate:  "Will the public
interest be
served by granting all the channels of communication to those who do
the
employing and denying even one cleared channel of communication to
the vast
group of employees?"
        And Nockels rightly predicted that "whoever controls radio
broadcasting in the future will eventually control the nation."
        Protectors of free speech have long recognized that the
commercial
marketplace by its very nature serves to silence unpopular voices and
dissenting points of view.  The cheer-leading media coverage of the
Persian
Gulf War is one of the more obvious and recent examples of this
reality.
        Unfortunately, today's leaders of public broadcasting got
their jobs
because of their willingness to ignore the free speech roots in the
battle for
public media.
        Advocates for the preservation of public broadcasting would be
well-advised to find a credible voice to tell the story of public
broadcasting's 75-year struggle for survival.  Big Bird and Barney
can't do it
alone.
(Wally Bowen is founder and executive director of the Asheville, N.C.-
based
Citizens for Media Literacy, a member of the public-interest
Telecommunications
Policy Roundtable.)