Aim of balance talk is to squelch Moyers

Current, August 4, 2003

To the Editor:

The July 14 front-page flap about whether Bill Moyers should be allowed to express his personal opinions on his weekly public affairs program shames many in the U.S. public broadcasting service. Critics' rhetoric about Moyers' alleged lack of "balance" and "objectivity" is pure sophistry, long since discredited.

The Carnegie Commission and Congress justified public broadcasting as compensating for the "incompleteness" of advertiser-driven programming. Public broadcasting was to be a "forum for debate and controversy" to "enhance citizenship and public service." Given the domination of commercial media by a handful of conservative corporate giants, you could make a case that PBS programs should all be progressive in order to provide needed balance in the media system as a whole. At the very least, as point man for the Johnson Administration's Public Broadcasting Act, Moyers surely is entitled to a few minutes a week as a legacy for his contribution.

The Constitutional concept of balance calls for a free press, free speech, and resort to the courts to balance the claims of those in power. The new notion of balance, promoted by the right since the Reagan Administration's assault on the media, is used to imply that there are only two points of view and that the claims of those in power must always be represented in any public discussion. That such demand has been advanced by those responsible for killing the "Fairness Doctrine" further exposes their true intentions---to dominate public discussion by fiat.

The conservatives who complain about balance never propose criteria that could be applied to all programs equally; they are simply trying to intimidate PBS from doing its job. Moreover, this "principle" is applied only to attack program content critical of established interests. Certainly, no one expects business programs to invite labor advocates to balance the views of management or religious programs to invite atheists.

Likewise, as an academic scholar of more than thirty years standing, I assure you that this rhetorical notion of objectivity is a fiction. All knowledge is grounded in values, interests, and the methods employed in its pursuit. Full disclosure and vigorous debate permit greater accuracy and fairness in the pursuit of elusive truth. Reason and evidence are critical. Objectivity, as called for by Moyer's critics, is just a euphemism for passive self-censorship and a tone of disinterest about things many care about and should care about. That Fox News promotes itself in these terms should reveal the hollowness of this rhetoric.

For many years the only public affairs programs to regularly appear on most PBS member stations were hosted by conservatives. The most notable of these were hosted by William F. Buckley and John McLaughlin, associates of the conservative National Review. They picked the format, topics, guests, and terms of the debate. Underwritten by corporations and conservative foundations, they were kept on despite low ratings. There was no hue and cry about the hosts expressing opinions. In fact, with the exception of Irwin Knoll of The Progressive, no writers or editors for progressive publications (e.g. The Nation, In These Times, The American Prospect, Z, Mother Jones, Utne Reader etc.) have ever even served as regular guests on such shows.

Bill Moyers is a target of conservatives both in and outside of public broadcasting because he is unique. He is the only progressive thinker or small "d" democrat in public life with the reputation and resources to make television programming for general audiences. Muzzle him and public discussion is left to the conservative flacks and hacks that currently dominate the airwaves controlled by Rupert Murdoch, General Electric, Disney and CBS Viacom.

The only concept of balance that ever made sense for PBS was balance across the whole schedule. Producers must be allowed to have a point of view. Productions must have some semblance of integrity. Again, we are not talking about abandoning reason and evidence. Ironically, some of the comments for which Moyers is being criticized consist of questions about the manipulation of the Iraq War debate by the Bush Administration. Who knows? Maybe if the American media had more like Bill Moyers, we might have been spared the current travesty in Iraq.

All issues may be viewed from many perspectives. The real scandal in PBS programming, routinely ignored by the conservative thought police who have been hounding Moyers for years, is that labor unions and public interest groups are banned from underwriting PBS programs while corporations are not. We need greater diversity, not self-censorship in PBS programming. And we certainly need a public intellectual like Bill Moyers telling it like it is.

Jerold Starr
Executive Director
Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting, Pittsburgh