Propaganda Broadcasting System?

The shameful corruption within the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (stations selling their donor lists to the Democratic Party in several cases and the Republicans in one instance) has unfortunately obscured an important new study on the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). The study of news and public affairs programming on PBS stations has found that the voice of large corporations and Wall Street is much louder

than all others -- a troubling finding for a broadcast system established to "provide a voice for groups that may otherwise be unheard." Four years after attempts by some in Congress to eliminate public TV, the study suggests that the cost of survival has been increasing commercialism, a persistent corporate bias and the marginalization of most that the system was intended to serve.

The independent academic study, "The Cost of Survival: Political Discourse and the 'New PBS,'" by Prof. William Hoynes of Vassar College examined all regular public affairs programming -- news, talk/interview, business and documentary -- during a two-week period between November 30, 1998 and December 13, 1998. The study analyzed a total of 75 separate programs, including 276 stories and 651 on-camera sources.

Hoynes concludes: "Instead of wide-ranging discussions and debates, the kinds that might engage viewers as citizens, not simply as audiences, public television provides programs dominated by the standard set of elite news sources. This insider orientation makes it hard to consider public television as independent or alternative."

ReclaimDemocracy.org director Jeff Milchen notes, "The only clear distinction between corporate funded commercial programming and most corporate sponsored "public" programming is that the PBS and NPR stations lend their newscasters voice to the commercials, giving them an added legitimacy to most viewers. This applies to National Public Radio (NPR) as well as PBS; I'm sure a study of NPR sources would yield similar results. This study clearly shows that people are not getting alternative perspectives from national "public" programming, though we can credit them with a little less gore and sensationalism.".

"The Cost of Survival" updates Hoynes' 1992 study, which found that public TV relied on a narrow spectrum of sources and experts. This bias has become even more pronounced in recent years. Some key findings:

CORPORATE VOICE: More than one-third of all on-camera sources (36.3%) during the two weeks studied were from corporations or Wall Street. This almost doubled the percentage found in the 1992 study. (pp. 10-11)

GENDER: News sources on public affairs programs are overwhelmingly male: Just 21.5% of sources in the study sample were women -- less than the 23.1% found in the 1992 study. Female sources tend to appear in specific types of stories, especially on social issues like health, family, religion and sexuality. Women constitute a majority (56.5%) of sources in stories on social issues. (pp. 14-16) They are virtually non-existent in other realms.

MERGERS & LAYOFFS: A case study of public TV coverage of corporate mergers and layoffs - a significant news story during the two-week period - showed that the main focus was on how investors were affected. Stories on mergers/acquisitions and anti-trust policy were dominated by corporate viewpoints, with only

one appearance by a citizen activist and none by members of the public. Coverage of corporate layoffs and unemployment was similarly narrow: 86% of the sources were corporate or Wall Street representatives. Not a single representative of organized labor appeared in public TV's discussion of corporate mergers or of layoffs. (pp. 20-22)

POLITICS: Coverage of domestic political issues featured the views of government officials (50.2%), professionals (31.2% -- overwhelmingly journalists) and corporate/Wall Street representatives (11%), with a tiny 7.6% from all other social groups combined. Consumer, environmental, small business or labor advocates, for example, were almost invisible. (pp. 13-14)

ECONOMICS: Public TV coverage of the economy is fully dominated by major corporate sources. Fully 75% of the sources in economic stories were from the corporate or investment world. By contrast, labor union representatives (1.5% of sources), consumer advocates (0.4%), non-professional workers (1.1%) and the general public (1.8%) were virtually invisible in economic stories. (pp. 11-12)

CITIZEN ACTIVISTS: Citizen activists (defined broadly as anyone active in community, religious, health, environmental, ethnic/racial issues, etc.) accounted for only 4.5% of total sources, down almost 25% from 1992. Citizen activists "appear with such relative infrequency - for example, there is no regular labor voice in discussions of the economy and no regular public interest perspective in debates about anti-trust policy - that they cannot help but be marginal, if intriguing, participants in the public discourse." (pp. 16-17)

THE PUBLIC: Only 5.7% of total sources are members of the general public - less than half 1992's 12%. "Another method of opening up the discourse," writes Hoynes, "is to allow real people to participate in debate and discussion." (pp. 17-18)

We don't suggest that one can count on the truth from any source; it takes work to consider different viewpoints and make your own truth out of what you learn. The problem is, most of Americans have limited access to anything but the corporate version of the news. It takes conscious effort and willingness to seek out opposing viewpoints to be well informed.

Readers should also know that the heads of both "public" broadcasting operations (PBS and NPR) are former agents of official government propaganda mediums. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting's chief executive, Robert Coonrod, was deputy director of the Voice of America (VOA), the global radio and television network. He oversaw VOA, and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (both Radio and TV Marti) among others. Mr. Coonrod also held senior positions in the United States Information Agency. NPR chief executive officer, Kevin Klose worked from 1994-1997 as President of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Inc. in Washington.

Based on a report by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR.org)