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March 16, 2011

THE COWARDS AT NPR/PBS

By Ralph Nader

Source:  nader.org

The tumultuous managerial shakeup at National Public Radio headquarters
for trivial verbal miscues once again has highlighted the ludicrous
corporatist right-wing charge that public radio and public TV are replete with
left-leaning or leftist programming.
Ludicrous, that is, unless this criticism’s yardstick is the propaganda
regularly exuded by the extreme right-wing Rush Limbaugh and Sean
Hannity. These “capitalists” use the public’s airwaves free-of-charge to make
big money.

The truth is that the frightened executives at public TV and radio have long
been more hospitable to interviews with right of center or extreme right-
wing and corporatist talking heads than liberal or progressive guests.

PBS’s Charlie Rose has had war-loving William Kristol on thirty one times,
Henry Kissinger fifty five times, Richard Perle ten times, the global
corporatist cheerleader, Tom Friedman seventy times. Compare that guest
list with Rose’s interviews of widely published left of center guests—Noam
Chomsky two times, William Grieder two times, Jim Hightower two times,
Charlie Peters two times, Lewis Lapham three times, Bob Herbert six times,
Paul Krugman twenty one times, Victor Navasky one time, Mark Green five
times and Sy Hersh, once a frequent guest, has not been on since January
2005.

Dr. Sidney Wolfe, the widely-quoted super-accurate drug industry critic, who
is often featured on the commercial TV network shows, has never been on
Rose’s show. Nor has the long-time head of Citizens for Tax Justice and
widely respected progressive tax analyst, Robert McIntyre.

Far more corporate executives, not known for their leftist inclinations,
appear on Rose’s show than do leaders of environmental, consumer, labor
and poverty organizations.

In case you are wondering, I’ve appeared four times, but not since August
2005, and not once on the hostile Terri Gross radio show.

The unabashed progressive Bill Moyer’s Show is off the air and has not been
replaced. No one can charge PBS’s News Hour with Jim Lehrer with anything
other than very straightforward news delivery, bland opinion exchanges and
a troubling inclination to avoid much reporting that upsets the power
structures in Congress, the White House, the Pentagon or Wall Street.

The longest running show on PBS was hard-line conservative William F.
Buckley’s show—Firing Line—which came on the air in 1966 and ended in
1999.

Sponsorship by large corporations, such as Coca Cola and AT&T, have
abounded—a largesse not likely to be continued year after year for a leftist
media organization.

None of this deters the Far Right that presently got a majority in the House of
Representatives to defund the $422 million annual appropriation to the
umbrella entity—Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). About 15% of all
revenues for all public broadcasting stations comes from this Congressional
contribution.

Though he admits to liking National Public Radio, conservative columnist
David Harsanyi, believes there is no “practical argument” left “in the
defense of federal funding…in an era of nearly unlimited choices….”

Really? Do commercial radio stations give you much news between the
Niagara of advertisements and music? Even the frenetic news, sports, traffic
and weather flashes, garnished by ads, are either redundant or made up of
soundbytes (apart from the merely 2 minutes of CBS radio news every half-
hour). If you want serious news, features and interviews on the radio, you go
to public radio or the few community and Pacifica radio stations.

Harsanyi continues: “Something, though, seems awfully wrong with
continuing to force taxpayers who disagree with the mission—even if their
perceptions are false—to keep giving….”

Public radio’s popular Morning Edition and All Things Considered are the
most listened to radio shows after Rush Limbaugh’s, and any taxpayer can
turn them off. Compare the relatively small public radio and TV budget
allocations with the tens of billions of dollars each year—not counting the
Wall Street bailout—in compelling taxpayers to subsidize, through hundreds
of programs, greedy, mismanaged, corrupt or polluting corporations either
directly in handouts, giveaways and guarantees or indirectly in tax escapes,
bloated contracts and grants. Can the taxpayer turn them off?

Here is a solution that will avoid any need for Congressional contributions to
CPB. The people own the public airwaves. They are the landlords. The
commercial radio and TV stations are the tenants that pay nothing for their 24
hour use of this public property. You pay more for your auto license than the
largest television station in New York pays the Federal Communications
Commission for its broadcasting license—which is nothing. It has been that
way since the 1927 and 1934 communication laws.

Why not charge these profitable businesses rent for use of the public
airwaves and direct some of the ample proceeds to nonprofit public radio
and public TV as well as an assortment of audience controlled TV and radio
channels that could broadcast what is going on in our country locally,
regionally, nationally and internationally? (See: Ralph Nader & Claire Riley,
Oh, Say Can You See: A Broadcast Network for the Audience, 5 J.L. & POL. 1,
[1988])

Now that would be a worthy program for public broadcasting. Get Limbaugh’s
and Hannity’s companies off welfare. Want to guess what their listeners think
about corporate welfare?