Taking the public out of public TV: PBS shows fail to reflect America (barph - libs hate it too!)

Seattle PostGlobe ^ | 10/21/10 | Julie Hollar

[epithermal]

In a special November issue of studies and analyses of PBS's major public affairs shows, FAIR's magazine Extra! shows that "public television" features guestlists strongly dominated by white, male and elite sources, who are far more likely to represent corporations and war makers than environmentalists or peace advocates. And both funding and ownership of these shows is increasingly corporate, further eroding the distinction between "public" and corporate television. There is precious little "public" left in "public television."

-snip-

The NewsHour's guestlist was 80 percent male and 82 percent white, with a pronounced tilt toward elites who rarely "go unheard," like current and former government and military officials, corporate representatives and journalists (74 percent). Since 2006, appearances by women of color actually decreased by a third, to only 4 percent of U.S. sources.

-- Women and people of color were far more likely to appear as "people on the street" providing brief, often reactive soundbites, than in more authoritative roles in live interviews.

-- Viewers were five times as likely to see guests representing corporations (10 percent v. 2 percent) than representatives of public interest groups who might counterweigh such moneyed interests--labor, consumer and environmental organizations.

-- While Democratic guests outnumbered Republican guests nearly 2-to-1 in overall sources, Republicans dominated by more than 3-to-2 in the program's longer format, live segments. (FAIR's 2006 NewsHour study, which examined a period when Republicans controlled the White House and Congress, showed Republican guests outnumbering Democrats in both categories: 2-to-1 among all sources, 3-to-2 in the longer live interviews.)

[epithermal]

If this is all true, then maybe PBS deserves a second chance (sarc), but not NPR.

[Hodar]

Just what essential niche does PBS fill, that isn’t filled by private corporations? Why do these entities need tax dollars to exist, when companies can do the same, or better work without tax dollars?

[equalitybeforethelaw]

May I ask, what does PBS deliver, that can’t be served by the 700+ channels now available? If we canned them, I am sure there would be a cable channel ready and willing to re-run British television programs. And they would do it without the nauseatingly endless pledge drives. How do you know you are a loser? You carry a PBS Pledge Drive book bag and think people are empressed by it.

[rockinqsranch]

“....PBS shows fail to reflect America....”

I’d think so when so many are BBC productions.

[Tublecane]

“Taking the public out of public TV: PBS shows fail to reflect America”

I don’t think they know what “public” means. It means government.

[Tublecane]

“May I ask, what does PBS deliver, that can’t be served by the 700+ channels now available?”

Constant interruptions to beg for money?

[Tublecane]

“barph - libs hate it too!”

Yeah, sorta like when they go after NBC for being an evil corporation. Remember, no matter how leftist something seems to you, it’s always rightist to someone else.

[Tublecane]

“I don’t think they know what ‘public’ means. It means government.”

Or maybe they do, and the blabber about representation is neither here nor there.

[Spok]

As with all leftist ‘causes’, like gender, racism, environment, etc., it is obvious that there is an agenda that subsumes the so-called ‘cause’, which is just a front. What the left opposes, and the ONLY thing the left opposes, is ideology. The pretense of caring about anything else, except for the truly delusional ‘useful idiots’, has become a hypocrisy that should no longer be tolerated. Like one of the La Raza speakers in LA said recently, the really objective is the destruction of what is imagined to be an imperialist regime. Environmentalism, along with all of the other fabricated fronts, will just melt away if and when they prevail, and polution, racism, sexism, persecution and oppression will dominate the landscape.