Dear President Obama,
I’m writing to address an important issue amid the upcoming budget debate. I was encouraged by the budget you recently released, which maintains funding for the Center for Public Broadcasting, which supports PBS and National Public Radio. Nevertheless, as the US House is controlled by the opposition, it’s not clear whether funding will allotted for public broadcasting, as Republicans favor cutting funding in the name of fiscal austerity, and because they accuse public broadcasting of being ideologically biased, with some even saying it is tantamount to propaganda.
I’d argue that public broadcasting is essential, for three primary reasons. First, people love it, and its cultural signficance can’t be overstated. Secondly, the accusations of bias against it are unfounded. Finally, it’s relatively inexpensive and well worth the funding.
Elmo and Friends
Let’s start with the first point—people love public broadcasting. Consider Public Television: The line-up of children’s programming alone is unbelievable and has influenced generations of Americans. Sesame Street. Reading Rainbow. Where in the World is Carmen San Diego: the line-up of great shows is never-ending. Kids clearly enjoy—and benefit—from the shows, and parents depend on this programming every day. (I’m pretty sure that if PBS billed for babysitting hours, it’d easily earn its annual budget, no problem.) PBS is particularly worthwhile for less wealthy families, as PBS is one of the only channels that folks without cable or satellite TV receive. (If you got rid of it at my house, you’d be getting rid of 12% of my channels.)
Sesame Street is perhaps the perfect representation of public broadcasting. Not only is the program important for making a serious attempt at adopting television as an educational medium, Sesame Street is also just plain damn fun, and entertainment is a virtue in its own right. Big Bird, Elmo, Cookie Monster and the gang are cultural institutions; does the 112th Congress really want to be responsible for evicting Elmo and friends? (I think supporters of public broadcasting should adopt this as their new motto: Don’t Evict Elmo!)
(As an aside, I loathe to see the day when our great nation goes to war and our army is staffed with a new generation of artillery specialists who haven’t seen Grover’s “near and far” routine. That might not end well. )
Now I’m not saying that Public Television children’s line-up is perfect. There have been notable failures. PBS was involved with Teletubbies, which is apparently about a cult that speaks an unintelligble language. (The show’s title also sounds like some sort of horrible obesity transporter.) And then there is Barney and Friends, which is essentially a window into some sort of hell. But even Public Television’s “failures” are successes; even though I vehemently disliked these two infernal shows, they were wildly popular.
As far as liberal bias, I think one would be hard-pressed to find evidence of such a bias on public television, as much of the programming is dedicated to children, and that which isn’t usually consists of educational programming (Nova, etc. By the way, public television first got me interested in science. Thanks, Carl Sagan).
But to be fair, one could make the case that Sesame Street’s “The Count” is quite suspicious. After all, if someone with a vaguely Transylvanian accent and a barritone voice started counting and then periodically laughing, I’d be more than a little creeped out.
Bias?
Jokes aside, many of the accusations of liberal bias are directed at National Public Radio, so let’s direct our attention there. Much of National Public Radio’s programming consists of current events and news, such as Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition.
Now, I’d hardly call Morning Edition propaganda. I mean, if it is, then it’s really, really ideologically unfocused propaganda that is rather informative and well-balanced and goes well with coffee and a streussel. I listen to Morning Edition every morning on the way to work, and oddly enough, National Public Radio was the first place I heard about conservative think tanks such as the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the American Enterprise Institute. Representatives from such groups are featured quite prominently on National Public Radio, and their views aren’t written off—on the contrary, they are often quite carefully considered. Since being introduced to such groups by NPR, I’ve followed them fairly closely, and while I don’t agree with all of these groups politically, I’ve found that knowing about them (and reading their opinions/arguments) has been quite helpful, as it’s helped me consider my own viewpoints more carefully and craft stronger arguments. (In other words, it’s a boon for critical thinking.)
As I’d recalled that right-leaning guests had been on NPR quite often, I wanted to see what the folks at the AEI and Heritage had to say about the whole “cut funding” issue. I did a quick Google search of each group’s respective sites, and a good number of the references were links boasting that certain speakers had been featured on NPR.
This seems strange, given that you’d expect to find more reasoned arguments against NPR and public broadcasting out there (especially at these sites). But in a simple Google search of the wider web, one simply finds accusation after accusation of bias (and pun after pun, National Propaganda Radio, Nazi Public Radio, etc.) but in the end there isn’t much proof. And saying something over and over again doesn’t make it so. (As an aside, if Captain Picard ever wrote a cookbook, that’d be a good cookbook title for him: Make It So!)
Many conservatives claimed to have found that proof last October, when Juan Williams was fired from NPR after making a controversial statement on Bill O’Reilly’s show, where he said:
Look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.
First, let me just say that any statement that starts “Look, Bill, I’m not a bigot…but” is headed in the wrong direction. The structure automatically gives some credence to the very statement that one just denied.
For instance, if I were to tell my wife, “Look, Wife, I don’t hate Grey’s Anatomy, after all, I watched that whole marathon with you, but I’ve got to admit, when I hear those stupid voiceovers at the beginning of the show, I get a little nervous.”
It’d be quite clear from that statement that I was no great fan of the voiceovers, and when you parse out what Williams said, the gist of it is pretty racist: When he’s on an airplane, he’s afraid of Muslims.
When you think about it, that’s a pretty absurd statement to make, given there are 1.4 billion Muslims, and about 2 million living in the States, and the vast, vast majority of those folks are peaceful, law-abiding folks. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that 1% of the two million or so Muslims living in the States were, in fact, terrorists. That’d be 20,000 terrorists already running around within our borders. And those folks have been here for years, so one would have expected a spate of terrorist attacks.
But that thankfully hasn’t occurred, and hopefully will not occur in the future. So Williams’s fears are clearly innacurate, but what of his firing? Is such a statement acceptable for a supposedly “objective” journalist? I’d say no. Had Williams or anyone in his position made his statement about any other group, he would have been fired posthaste, and without any fanfare—and rightfully so, as bigotry should have no place on the airwaves.
Now NPR likely made a political mistake by firing Williams because it provided the rare scrap that could be bandied about as “evidence” of bias, but I think firing Williams was ethically justified, as his comments were quite repugnant. That is to say, Williams has has every right to say whatever he’d like, but his employers don’t have to support his speech, as it reflects on NPR as a whole. (This is especially true since his integrity as a journalist could easily be called into question.)
Discussing the firing, Republican Senator Jim Demint framed the issue as an instance of bias and an attack on free speech, “Once again we find the only free speech liberals support is the speech with which they agree.”
Yet Mr. Demint’s comments seem disingenous here, as the recurring debate about funding seems less to be an issue of fiscal policy (it’s a tiny portion of the budget, relatively speaking), and more of an attempt to bump off the perceived competition (NPR), thereby making Mr. Demint and his party seemingly guilty of the crime they attribute to NPR. And Mr. Demint’s statement also ignores the fact that conservatives are not only featured on NPR, but (perhaps) even courted disproportionately. Not to mention that the whole discussion of alleged bias at NPR also ignores the many shows that don’t deal with politics at all: Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me?, Car Talk, This American Life, etc.
Cost
Finally, there is the issue of cost. For this fiscal year (2011), Public Broadcasting supporters have asked for a total of $611 million dollars, which amounts to 0.000172015766% of the 2010 Federal Budget. That’s $2 per person (divided equally). (For context, consider the F-35 Fighter program, which may end up costing $382 billion.)
While $611 million is no small amount, clearly there are other areas where we can cut much more significant amounts without losing institutions like Snuffleupagus, which are simply indispensable.
Thanks, and take care,
Brett
P.S. I’m tired, so I’ll plug my links (where I got my data) in tomorrow.
Public Radio
bias, Big Bird, conservatives, Grover, juan williams, letters to the president, liberals, npr, obama, public radio, Public TV, radio, Sesame Street, TV
