Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Nightline by CIPB Executive Director Jerold Starr (November 2000)

Jim Rutenberg reported in the New York Times this month that PBS Frontline has contracted out a two hour special about the Clinton Administration to ABC Nightline. According to the report, Frontline is paying Nightline for its reporting and video.

We at CIPB consider the PBS mission essential to preserving space for
democratic debate in the context of an increasingly concentrated and profit
driven system of mass communications. We believe the present trend toward increasing commercialism has been purchased at great cost to public broadcasting's public service mission. As former PBS program director Kathy Quattrone observed, "Many program decisions are being based not on the program value that they bring, but on what kind of a deal it can bring."

At the same time, the number and quality of public affairs documentaries on PBS have been declining. Despite ITVS, independent journalists face too many obstacles in getting their work distributed by the PBS National Program Service, including PBS Underwriting Guidelines that prohibit (even partial) support from the few public interest groups dedicated to public education on important social problems.

The Guidelines justify this on the premise that: "PBS must guard against the public perception that editorial control might have been exercised by program funders." In this context, what are we to make of the PBS Frontline-Nightline deal? Let us be clear about the "public perception" of this one. Here is a publicly funded service paying production costs it refuses to publicly disclose to a production unit with a $7 million a year news anchor whose program is distributed by a commercial network run by the Walt Disney Company. Disney is one of only five media giants that together control more than half the revenues of all media in the United States.

Even more shocking is the revelation that the deal serves primarily to help
out Nightline, which has lost audience and the corresponding advertising and is looking for "fresh revenues." Apparently, the Walt Disney Company feels no social responsibility to ensure news and public affairs coverage despite its enormous profits.

Adding insult to injury, PBS has to wait one week to broadcast Frontline until after Nightline runs its own five-night series on the administration. In the view of Times writer Jim Rutenberg, "this means that Frontline, is, in one sense, getting Nightline's seconds." Rutenberg allows that "this
arrangement would have been unheard of just a few years ago" and the mediachannel.org calls it "bizarre."

I am sure this is not the "public perception" PBS envisioned when they cut this deal, but it is no less real. CIPB urges our valued public broadcasting service to turn away from these commercial deals that obliterate the vital distinction between a truly public broadcasting service and one linked to
subsidiaries of communications conglomerates looking for "fresh revenue." Instead, please join CIPB in its bold, new effort to achieve the financial security and editorial independence required for public broadcasting in the public interest. Help us to achieve a Public Broadcasting Trust that will
liberate public broadcasting from its dependence on federal appropriations and corporate underwriting so that it can fulfill its most important mission in our democratic society.

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Broadcasters Upset FCC Won't Let Fairness Rules Die by David Hatch Electronic Media (October 9, 2000)

Only days after a deadline set by the US Court of Appeals, in a surprise move the FCC suspended its controversial peronal-attack and political editorial rules for 60 days to "obtain a better record" on them. The Court is requiring the FCC to justify the existence of the rules which require TV stations to provide response time to candidates they editorialize against and to individuals attacked on the air. The NAB weighed in right away, Eddie Fritts CEO and President said, "We are saddened that politics takes a higher priority than the Constitution. We hope the court quickly puts an end to this charade." Fritts finds it "astonishing" that the FCC would consider reviving the doctrine, which he described as a "policy that allowed politically appointed regulators to pass judgment on the 'fairness' of a news report." In typical dramatic fashion, FCC Commissioner Powell wrote, "This order hangs over broadcasters like the sword of Damocles."

CIPB Comments: Contrary to the headline, killing this rule would not be euthanasia, but murder. Research demonstrates that news and public affairs substantially declined after termination of the Fairness Doctrine, contrary to broadcaster promises. What did increase were right wing talk shows and religious right ministries, now free to editorialize against their favorite demons without fear of contradiction. Broadcasters claim first amendment rights, but these frequencies belong to the public who get no fee for their use. What about the public's first amendment rights to be informed on the issues of the day, fully and accurately, and from all sides? If the FCC executes this rule, it will serve as the NAB's hired killers, protecting not freedom but privilege. Where is PBS, APTS and NPR in this debate? Now is the time to speak up.

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PBS CONVENTION COVERAGE-- NEITHER ALTERNATIVE NOR EDUCATIONAL by Jerold M. Starr, appeared on tompaine.com and mediachannel.org August 2000

Two weeks ago, the Republicans staged their national Presidential nominating convention and then took the show on the road. This week, the Democrats ring up the curtain on theirs. With candidates and platform already settled, Ted Koppel has judged these affairs "not newsworthy" and Tom Brokaw has commented, "There's no there there." While these assessments might be accurate, it is also true that the major networks have cut their campaign coverage to the point that most viewers must rely for their information on attack ads paid for by election committees.

Theoretically not bound by the imperative of ratings generated revenues, PBS has the opportunity to serve the public with a critical, in-depth look at the U.S. political system and process. In fact, however, the PBS pundits for the Republican convention were overwhelmingly older, white, males from the privileged classes and their chatter was virtually indistinguishable from that on the commercial networks — inside dope-stering, performance and fashion reviews, and horse race handicapping.

For the millions of us who have indicated that the major parties do not speak to or for us, however, this simply adds up to twice as many hours of propaganda and gossip. Perhaps this is predictable when PBS coverage — from the first electronically enhanced gavel smack to the last red, white and blue balloon drop — is sponsored, I mean "underwritten," by the same giant corporations footing the bill for the two major party pageants: the investment firm of SalomonSmithBarney, the telecommunications conglomerate SBC Communications, AT&T and General Motors for starters.

Read the full article here.

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Signal Degradation by Jerold M. Starr, appeared in the August 14, 2000, edition of the American Prospect.  August 2000

In late June, the House passed the Noncommercial Broadcasting Freedom of Expression Act. The act — the product of a three-year battle involving the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), public-broadcasting advocates, and the religious right — removes all the educational programming requirements for noncommercial educational broadcasting licenses. For organizations like the 1,250-member National Religious Broadcasters and the American Family Association—which owns 165 noncommercial licenses and has 178 applications pending—and companies like Cornerstone TeleVision, a Pittsburgh-based ultraconservative ministry that syndicates its programming on 85 cable channels, the new act takes them one step closer to being able to broadcast full-time sectarian religious programming on television and radio frequencies reserved for public educational broadcasting.

The assault on educational licenses by conservative religious broadcasters has its roots in the Reagan Revolution, when then-FCC Chairman Mark Fowler pledged "to take deregulation to the limits of existing law." Fowler's FCC abolished the guidelines for local, news and public-affairs, and nonentertainment programming and dropped almost all public interest standards in deference to the "property rights" of broadcasters. By 1989 one of three network affiliates offered no public-affairs programs, and one of six no news. Limits on prime-time advertising were rescinded, commercial time was doubled, and by the end of the 1980s, a new format--program-length infomercials — consumed 3 percent of broadcast time.

Read the full article at The American Prospect.