Cheers, Megan! If my memory serves me right, President Obama has stated that he doesn’t get his news from TV. As a very wise dude, he must have (as I do), no use for the ‘non-news’ and ‘info-tainment’ trivia and diatribe that now passes for “News”. To my mind, Fox and CNN both fail miserably, in being anything more than mouthpieces and bandstands for a tyrannical corporatocracy.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time in the countries you’ve mentioned here, and their public programming is all an intelligent person could require for vital information and ever-expanding knowledge. Living currently in America, I don’t watch television at all. All dessert, no entre. Brainwashing ads and program drivel. It’s like Brittish coffee - undrinkable. Let’s hope the president sees it this way, too.
Posted by wanzellarts on Aug 6, 2009 at 11:07 AM
We need to address a few errors and burst a few bubbles in the otherwise good In These Times article by Free Press’s Megan Tady titled “Mr. President, Help Save the News”:
* There simply is no local news programming on most U.S. public tv stations for americans to “look to”. And NPR’s patchy network news requires regular monitoring here—http://nprcheck.blogspot.com/ and here—http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=19&media_outlet_id=21
* I especially liked the “hard-hitting journalism” our public broadcasters provided us during the leadup to the U.S. attack on Iraq, didn’t you? I’m speaking facetiously of course. Read my essay from “Z” magazine on the topic:
http://themediastructurefailed.zoomshare.com/files/z_sept_07.pdf
* The article fails to even mention the $90 billion public interest ripoff the digital broadcast transition represents. In exchange for giving up one analog channel, we’ve given each big media owner TEN digital channels at no charge and with no strings attached! The beltway policy wonks have been totally clueless and out to lunch on this key point with regard to the ownership and programming needs of people of color and other underserved groups.
* Like virtually every other such article, this one dances around any restructuring specifics. I gather from the footwork in Tady’s piece that technology and more and permanent funding may well do the trick. When is somebody in the policy arena going to spell it out? Here. I can do it for them:
There needs to be a public media board of trustees—the clear majority of whom are publicly elected—in every community across the U.S.
If we can require direct local public accountability for water sanitation services, we can certainly do the same concerning public media. Anything short of that is a sellout and will perpetuate the core problem: those quotation marks we’ve had to add to “public” broadcasting.
There, I said it. U.S. public broadcasting is, mostly, a myth.
And here’s a new article at “Counterpunch” in which I say it again—
http://www.counterpunch.org/macek08052009.html
Is some gatekeeper or funder going to hold their finger up to their mouth and “shoosh” me now? Have I stepped on some third rail akin to Santa and the Easter Bunny? Public broadcasting is better, marginally, but better than what? Bill O’Reilly? The 6PM network news? This is a distinction without much difference.
Certainly, we need to “prop up” and raise high the concept of public media, and credit public radio and tv’s occasional successes, but we need to be realistic about how irrelevant most public broadcasting, and in particular PBS, has become. We must hope that this is not going to be the type of propping up that fake scenery, tin horn dictators, and drunks sometimes receive, for too often public broadcasters have failed us when we needed them most.
Because we have yet to understand who must play the biggest role of all in our public media system: the public. That’s the same mistake the Pacifica network board made ten years ago when it, unsuccessfully, resisted fundamental restructuring.
So batten down the hatches. We’re probably in for some rough seas ahead as we try to re-envision U.S. public service media for the ensuing epoch. On one side will be the well funded forces who support, more or less, the status quo but with mainly financial and technological improvements. On the other side will stand the public and its fuzzy demands for “democratization”. Who will win? Or will we all lose again?
And has anyone seen any “ad-free” children
Posted by Scott Sanders on Aug 8, 2009 at 8:37 AM
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Reader Comments
Cheers, Megan! If my memory serves me right, President Obama has stated that he doesn’t get his news from TV. As a very wise dude, he must have (as I do), no use for the ‘non-news’ and ‘info-tainment’ trivia and diatribe that now passes for “News”. To my mind, Fox and CNN both fail miserably, in being anything more than mouthpieces and bandstands for a tyrannical corporatocracy.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time in the countries you’ve mentioned here, and their public programming is all an intelligent person could require for vital information and ever-expanding knowledge. Living currently in America, I don’t watch television at all. All dessert, no entre. Brainwashing ads and program drivel. It’s like Brittish coffee - undrinkable. Let’s hope the president sees it this way, too.
Good post…keeps readers stick to it.
We need to address a few errors and burst a few bubbles in the otherwise good In These Times article by Free Press’s Megan Tady titled “Mr. President, Help Save the News”:
* There simply is no local news programming on most U.S. public tv stations for americans to “look to”. And NPR’s patchy network news requires regular monitoring here—http://nprcheck.blogspot.com/ and here—http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=19&media_outlet_id=21
* I especially liked the “hard-hitting journalism” our public broadcasters provided us during the leadup to the U.S. attack on Iraq, didn’t you? I’m speaking facetiously of course. Read my essay from “Z” magazine on the topic:
http://themediastructurefailed.zoomshare.com/files/z_sept_07.pdf
* The article fails to even mention the $90 billion public interest ripoff the digital broadcast transition represents. In exchange for giving up one analog channel, we’ve given each big media owner TEN digital channels at no charge and with no strings attached! The beltway policy wonks have been totally clueless and out to lunch on this key point with regard to the ownership and programming needs of people of color and other underserved groups.
* Like virtually every other such article, this one dances around any restructuring specifics. I gather from the footwork in Tady’s piece that technology and more and permanent funding may well do the trick. When is somebody in the policy arena going to spell it out? Here. I can do it for them:
There needs to be a public media board of trustees—the clear majority of whom are publicly elected—in every community across the U.S.
If we can require direct local public accountability for water sanitation services, we can certainly do the same concerning public media. Anything short of that is a sellout and will perpetuate the core problem: those quotation marks we’ve had to add to “public” broadcasting.
There, I said it. U.S. public broadcasting is, mostly, a myth.
And here’s a new article at “Counterpunch” in which I say it again—
http://www.counterpunch.org/macek08052009.html
Is some gatekeeper or funder going to hold their finger up to their mouth and “shoosh” me now? Have I stepped on some third rail akin to Santa and the Easter Bunny? Public broadcasting is better, marginally, but better than what? Bill O’Reilly? The 6PM network news? This is a distinction without much difference.
Certainly, we need to “prop up” and raise high the concept of public media, and credit public radio and tv’s occasional successes, but we need to be realistic about how irrelevant most public broadcasting, and in particular PBS, has become. We must hope that this is not going to be the type of propping up that fake scenery, tin horn dictators, and drunks sometimes receive, for too often public broadcasters have failed us when we needed them most.
Because we have yet to understand who must play the biggest role of all in our public media system: the public. That’s the same mistake the Pacifica network board made ten years ago when it, unsuccessfully, resisted fundamental restructuring.
So batten down the hatches. We’re probably in for some rough seas ahead as we try to re-envision U.S. public service media for the ensuing epoch. On one side will be the well funded forces who support, more or less, the status quo but with mainly financial and technological improvements. On the other side will stand the public and its fuzzy demands for “democratization”. Who will win? Or will we all lose again?
And has anyone seen any “ad-free” children
i like your following post wanzellarts :)
Cheers, Megan! If my memory serves me right, President Obama has stated that he doesn
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