PBS: A Publicly-Funded `Private Broadcasting Service?'

If a public broadcasting journalist uses public funds, daily access to publicly-funded television stations and air-time and venture capital from media conglomerates like Gannett or Liberty Media to establish a privately-owned commercial venture which personally enriches the public broadcasting journalist, can it still be considered “noncommercial,” “nonprofit”, legitimate “educational broadcasting”?

Yet you probably can’t expect too much soul-searching from the publicly-funded “Public Broadcasting Service” which seems to exclude most of the antiwar public from being able to use its TV studios to freely speak to each other. Despite its annual “marathon,” PBS still seems to be little more than a “Private Broadcasting Service” for private, special corporate Establishment interests. And whether they call their media operation Gannett, PBS, Channel 13, Liberty Media, or News Corporation/Fox News, the Corporate Straights still don’t seem to believe too much in sharing any of their airtime with counter-cultural antiwar voices who don’t fit their straight philosophical mold.

(Downtown 5/8/91)

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