Are we now facing legislated ignorance? (Re: U.S. Public Broadcasting funding)

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I don't think PBS should be used as an "official government viewpoint" organ (left or right).

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I do think it should be completely privatized.

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Similarly, do you believe that all scientific research should be funded privately or should there be government grants to fund it?Wouldn't that just mean that the private corporate interests would fund only the viewpoints and products that they think will make the most money, not what may be most needed?

[quote]And we can cut the Federal deficit while we are at it. [quote] You know what would do a better job of cutting the federal deficit?Rolling back the tax rate for the wealthy to where it was before Reagan.Or, we could just follow Clinton's financial and economic policies more closely to get rid of the deficit, like he did.

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Oh yeah, and that is without going into the fact that they all have to be wasting time selling you something. You end up paying for the news anyway, only now you get to have a reason for it to not give you the full story and to bother you with commercials.

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Exactly.You can listen to NPR and get a story or an interview that is a full five minutes long. Plenty of time to really talk about the issues and examine things.Commercial radio and TV news never takes this long to cover any story. In fact, in the rare event that I wash commercial news, stories which are rarely more than a few sountbites strung together, I end up getting frustrated and indignantly asking the TV or the radio the incredibly obvious yet unasked questions.It's almost nothing but superficial soundbites.

LOL!

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A business that provides products or services that nobody needs is a candidate for bankruptcy.

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Hold on.I was talking about companies trying to make profits.Often a profit motive caters to the largest market, also known as the lowest common denominator, in media especially.There's a reason there is so much crap on commercial and cable TV; they have to appeal to the masses in order to get the most viewers in order to sell the most ad space to General Mills or Gap or Ford or Kraft.And, let's not forget that if General Mills or Gap or Ford or Kraft is worried that a show might offend the delicate political or social sensitivites of that lowest common denominator, they will pull their ad money. This kind of financial pressure is what keeps the shows safe and dumb and completely challenge- and education-free.That's the kind of thing publicly-funded media avoids.

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Your question seems to presuppose that businesses have a primary purpose other than providing services or products that are needed.

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No, most businesses' primary purpose is to generate profit, and also to create wants and needs where there weren't any before.Did anyone ever really need a Beanie Baby? Or a Cabbage Patch Doll? What about those silly cat tire rims that spin when your car is at a standstill?Medical insurance companies, for example, routinely deny expensive treatments to their customers who need them because it cuts into profits.

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The market for PBS-type programming may be small compared to more entertainment oriented programming, but it is not zero. No advocate of publicly funded PBS on this thread has yet provided evidence that a privatized PBS could not capture a market share equivalent to its current share.

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That's not the point.The point is, the corporations which fund PBS are going to expect to have influence over content in exchange for their cash.

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The public PBS advocates argument is similar to arguing that the government must manufacture and distribute unicycles if the major bicycle manufacturers do not, just because some people like to ride unicycles ("and they're non-polluting !).

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Well, if the analogy is to be followed completely, the unicycles should be of much superior quality and of much smaller cost than the bicycles, and available to everyone without constant recordings playing from a box bolted to the metal tube that tells me to buy this cereal or that car, or the other processed cheese food like on the junky, expensive bicycles.Then sure, I'd buy one.

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In 1969, commercial television was broadcast only and dominated by the Big 3 networks. This is no longer the case. If there was a case for a public PBS in 1969, technological developments have altered the landscape and there is no longer such a case.

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I completely disagree. It is even more important now bvecause the quality of the 3 networks used to be so much higher back in '69.

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Or should "public interests" extort funding for viewpoints and products that are no longer needed or can be supplied just as efficiently from private sources ?

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How can it be supplied from corporate interests without any corporate influence?

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I realize the consolidation of ownership gives a false impression that diversity of opinion and viewpoints is proportional to the quantity of available channels. Still, broadcast options available to joe consumer is much more diverse and readily available than when PBS and NPR were first created.

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Well, only marginally.There is a LOT of utter crap on TV.Sure, there's several nature, history, and animal-themed channels, but none of them hold a candle to the quality of scholarship of PBS programs like NOVA.I mean, the History channel is a joke.Show me anything on any single cable or network channel that is as consistently excellent as NOVA or the Ken Burns documentaries, let alone on a bunch of channelsThis message has been edited by schrafinator, 06-25-2005 05:35 PM

Monk, if NPR and PBS were generally supportive of right wing conservative viewpoints to the exclusion of all others, do you believe that the current proposal to cut funding would have even been hinted at?

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Here’s an example, Rep. David Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat, said the 25 percent reduction in funding for the coming year would be ‘disastrous’ for public broadcasting, which he said is the most valuable resource we have for getting quality programming for children."

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Now what politician is going to oppose programming for children?

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Well, considering that there is NO commercial network that is producing any programming for children that even approaches the quality of PBS's, I think that is a completely fair statement.

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The 25% reduction the congressman is speaking of is only the federal appropriation portion. Given my previous post, we know this amount actually represents 25% of the 15% of the total funding for PBS and NPR or 3.8%. The actual reduction in real dollars is 3.8%. But nobody hears that, they hear 25% or 50% and fear the elimination of these organizations altogether.

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...kind of like "first I voted for it, then I voted against it".

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Aside from the economics, I realize your question is more on the issue of media bias. To that I would say I found Bill Moyers decidedly left wing in his views despite his occasional conservative guests.

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I would generally agree that he is quite a bit to the left of the current definition of Conservative, but in past years he would have been considered a moderate.(These days I think that even Nixon would be considered far too liberal to be listened to by the Republicans in power. After all, he instituted both the EPA and OSHA and set aside tons of land for the National Park system.What a pinko. )Anyway, while Moyers might be left-leaning, William F. Buckley is and always has been decidedly right-leaning.So, how come it's only the Reps crying about "bias" in NPR when Buckley, and now Tucker Carlson, have been there all along?

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But he is not on the air anymore and I haven’t seen much evidence of bias since his departure.

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...except with Buckley and Carlson.

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So no, I don’t believe there is a political bias as regards to PBS. NPR on the other hand may be a different story, I couldn’t say because I haven’t listened to it for quite some time.

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Well, you know, maybe you should listen to NPR more. NPR listeners consistently show in surveys that they are better informed about political and international events that the people who watch mainstream TV news.

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Nobody wants to see PBS or NPR off the air.

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I disagree.Right wing conservatives have always tried to get rid of NPR and PBS.If they didn't want NPR and PBS to go away, why would they accuse it of "liberal bias" so often and so loudly?

That brochure would never fly today, and here's why...1) Too many words and numbers.2) Not ANY fear mongering.3) No appeal to God.I find it amazing how incredibly LIBERAL Nixon was by today's standards!He sounds a lot like Clinton, actually.