More aggravating than pledge breaks . . .

So now PBS is too left-wing, eh? I thought the point of PBS was to be not be on any wing! If I find these shows on my PBS station, I may just give up on it forever. PBS is having enough frustrating problems with the whole government-making-it-go-digital thing. So now PBS is having monthly pledge breaks (pledge seasons as they call it). Instead of having local people repeat themselves begging for money, we have national people repeating themselves and begging for money. I haven't been a member of PBS (b/c of financial reasons), and if FAIR is accurate (as they usually are), then I probably will never become come one.

The notion that public broadcasting should find ways to balance itself is odd, and accepts at face value the right-wing critique that PBS is biased to the left. If anything, PBS (and public broadcasting in general) is theoretically designed to balance the voices that dominate the commercial media. As the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act proposed, public broadcasting should have "instructional, educational and cultural purposes" and should address "the needs of unserved and underserved audiences, particularly children and minorities."

Instead, public television has in practice largely been a home for elite viewpoints, dominated by long-running political shows hosted by conservatives (Firing Line, McLaughlin Group, One on One) and by business shows aimed at the investing class (Nightly Business Report, Adam Smith's Money World, Wall $treet Week). When this line-up wasn't enough to insulate public TV from right-wing complaints in the mid-1990s, programmers responded by creating more series for conservatives like Peggy Noonan (Peggy Noonan on Values) and Ben Wattenberg (Think Tank).

Now PBS seems once again to be trying to placate right-wing critics, in this case by bringing to public broadcasting voices already well-represented in the mainstream media.

FAIR ACTION ALERT: PBS Panders to Right With New Programming