Page 425 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2
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                       established itself as the ally of the common people. What scholars call an
                       “authoritarian-populist tactic” has since been also used by other right-wing cul-
                       tural reformers, from Pat Buchanan to Ronald Reagan to Newt Gingrich, look-
                       ing to privatize PBS. Such critics do not really represent the public, which is
                       rarely consulted and never asked what it might like to see on public television. If
                       public television is paradoxically “for the people, not by the people,” so too is the
                       recurring conservative critique of its shortcomings.
                          Against the neoconservative position, liberal defenders argue that PBS brings
                       integrity to television by providing a sophisticated alternative to market-driven
                       infotainment. Unlike pay cable, it also “freely” disseminates enlightenment to the
                       culturally deprived. According to this logic, PBS deserves public subsidy because
                       it ensures the survival of “respectable” culture (as defined by educated tastemak-
                       ers) while also offering the masses an opportunity to pursue informal education
                       and cultural refinement through television viewing. The fact that most adults
                       avoid PBS’s curriculum much or all of the time is, significantly, downplayed.
                       Instead, children’s programs like Sesame Street, which tend to attract a much
                       larger and more socially and economically diverse audience than does prime-
                       time PBS, are strategically accentuated in a metaphoric battle to save “Big Bird”
                       from budget-cutting neoconservatives. The defensive position has succeeded in
                       preserving a token amount of Congressional funding for PBS. However, it has
                       also reproduced the system’s internal elitism and therefore constrained thinking
                       about how PBS might serve a broader range of cultural interests and tastes.
                          The intellectual/artistic Left’s critique of PBS emphasizes intersecting prob-
                       lems of political censorship and discrete commercialization. Many activist film-
                       makers, media reformers, and progressive scholars see in public television an
                       unrequited opportunity for communicative democracy. Because our corporately
                       owned media system threatens the free exchange of ideas required of democ-
                       racy, noncommercial “public” media spaces are paramount to a fair and just po-
                       litical system. PBS’s potential to provide such an electronic public sphere is said
                       to have been undermined by its reliance on corporate underwriters who do not
                       wish to be associated with controversial programming. Corporate funding has,
                       over the years, led to an overabundance of “safely splendid” programming—
                       such  as  imported  British  costume  dramas  and  nature  documentaries—that
                       crowds out provocative material, contend critics. The watchful eyes of conserva-
                       tive politicians looking for liberal or unconventional “bias” is another factor in
                       the difficulties—and sometimes outright institutional censorship—experienced
                       by independent producers who are deemed too controversial for PBS.
                          The Left provides a valuable counter-explanation to the “problem” with PBS.
                       Challenging neoconservatives in Washington, this position maintains that a sta-
                       ble source of noncommercial funding is what is needed to ensure PBS’s journal-
                       istic freedom and protection from political bias. However, critics from this camp
                       tend to oversimplify the role of political economics by presuming that PBS was
                       (or would be) democratic in the absence of corporate interference. They tend
                       to overlook the politics of cultural value by replacing “safely splendid” ideals
                       with their own class- and education-bound view of what counts as worthwhile
                       television. Progressive intellectuals and “censored” PBS producers often distrust
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