Posted on 07/04/2005 7:21:21 AM PDT by SandRat
The House of Representatives restored the proposed budget cuts that PBS' defenders claimed would destroy it. So PBS has been saved. Who can contain their excitement?
Now, I must disclose a bit here. I worked in the back alleys of PBS for about a half-dozen years. I produced a weekly television show and several documentaries, and I was involved on the business side of things quite a bit. I've attended annual meetings and conferences. In short, I know a little bit about public television.
And ... it's liberal. It just is. To say it isn't is just plain batty. The shows we associate most with PBS are run by liberals - some of them great journalists and some of them miserable partisan hacks - and they tend to tackle questions from a liberal perspective.
The people who run PBS are liberals. The decision-makers are liberals, and - contrary to funhouse logic of PBS's left-wing critics - the fact that these executives sometimes opt to put conservatives on the air doesn't change that fact.
It might mean, as some leftist critics claim, that PBS execs don't have the courage of their convictions. Or it might just mean they're trying to make the network more balanced and respond to a perceived need.
Whatever. But don't tell me the Volvos in the PBS parking lot with bumper stickers reading, "God is coming ... and she's pissed!" really belong to closet conservatives. It just won't wash.
In fact, I just recently caught a biographical documentary about the late Communist stooge Henry Wallace that was so over the top in its praise, I thought it would end with him riding Pegasus through the clouds.
That said, conservatives who think the regular fare on PBS is crazy left-wing stuff overstate the case. Typical PBS programming involves breathless suburbanites dreaming that Grandpa's old footlocker might actually be the Ark of the Covenant on "Antiques Roadshow." Yes, Bill Moyers is a disingenuous lefty, but Gwen Ifill and Jim Lehrer try to play it fair. And it isn't a conservative-free zone.
The liberal-conservative thing, however, is a sideshow. Public television was created to help poor people, educate young people, and to promote diversity on TV. Today, the average PBS viewer is in his late 50s.
Somewhere around two-thirds of the poor have cable or satellite TV. Even more have DVD or VCR players. When PBS was created in 1967, it increased the number of television stations by 25 percent. Today PBS stations constitute a rounding error among the choices available to most consumers.
Now, I know it doesn't sound like it, but I've actually mellowed on PBS. I watch it often, and I think it does a lot of great work. It's entirely possible that if we stopped funding it, it would become much worse in quality - and, almost surely, in political bias.
So here's a thought. Let's be honest about what PBS is and isn't. It ain't what they say it is, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily bad. If I am a plumber but I pretend to be a banker, I'm a faker. But that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with being a plumber. The next time we have this debate, maybe PBS' defenders could admit what it is. Then we could decide whether we want it.
Jonah Goldberg, the online editor of the National Review, appears Mondays in the Star. Contact him at JonahsColumn@aol.com.
Nice try Jonah but they still don't deserve my tax dollars. Let em' get paid the old fashioned way, work for it in the capitalistic system.
They're just not very good at it.
So9
If it's so wonderful PBS ought to be able to survive in the market, without a nipple from mama guv'mint.
Yes, they're lefty overall. But they do some good things as well.
Don't forget that PBS was the only network to pick up "Adventures from the Book of Virtues" after the free market rejected it.
all the more reason to kill the liberals propaganda sacred cow.
A PBS spokesperson recently said that only 15% of their funding comes from taxes. Unless they are getting government money from some other type of funding, that is about half of what Democrats are saying would be necessary in the future to cut social security benefits to keep it solvent. So 15%? PBS should be able to get along without our tax dollars.
Jonah would've been much better off had he spent some times in the hallways/attending meetings of an infantry battalion.
And in the face of a credible threat of having that funding pulled, contributions to local stations increase by 15 to 40%. So, nothing is lost, and they probably gain in many areas.
Yet we are pouring far more money into what is now an insignificant benefit....
Stop the waste, pull the funding.
It's the RINOs on this one. Can't blame the dems for what dems do. We should be able to simply not include this tax extortion for the purpose of leftist propaganda, but the fake republicans don't have the courage.
Every once in a while Jonah comes out with a really stupid column, and this is one of them.
PBS is liberal from one end to the other. Hell, even Big Bird is a liberal and Car Talk is liberal.
When they do a typical news report, they have live quotes from three or four liberal senators, they report a snippet of the Republican response at second hand, carefully selected, and then three liberal commentators jump in and run with it.
I well remember all those breathless news stories about the wonderful Sandinistas freeing their country from oppression. I remember all those admiring stories about noble Fidel Castro. I remember all the hit pieces and hatchet jobs on Republican administrators.
There hasn't been a single positive story about President Bush in five years.
So, they have three or four token conservatives, but they keep them on tight leashes and drown them out whenever they venture into forbidden territory. This is not the way to "educate the poor and ignorant."
Uh huh, we're supposed to believe this from a humble insider. I remember their reporting of the 1994 elections where the DemoRats lost Congress, and the 2000 & 2004 elections. PBS was so pissed-off that they couldn't see straight. Tell me about fair-and-balanced, liberal pukes.
Get the government out of television, medical insurance, and retirement planning and this country will be much better off.
Thanks for telling us what we already know, Jonah.
Why the gop has refused for ten years to stop wasteful spending is the true issue.
If the BILLIONS of dollars made by mass marketing of Elmo, Barney, Telletubbies, etc... were funnelled back into PBS there would be no need for taxes at all. So where DOES that money go? It could go for the educational series that don't have the access to toys, clothing and so on that the fiscally sound programs earn. If you come to America through PBS, you owe a little something back to PBS.
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