We need to STRENGTHEN public broadcasting
Christian Christensen for Common Dreams
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Although federal funding makes up only a small portion of
the overall budgets for these organizations—a combination of private donations,
corporate sponsorship, state financing makes up a larger part—the funding is
vital for public television and radio in smaller local markets where public or
corporate support is difficult to obtain. The cuts would likely kill off those
smaller stations and weaken those in larger markets.
In effect, the last traces of public media would disappear
from large sections of the United States, leaving them entirely in the hands of
corporate media.
This attack on U.S. public media is perhaps the least surprising news imaginable. When I was interviewed last month here in Sweden after Trump effectively shut down Voice of America (VOA), I was asked what could be next on the Republican media agenda. I didn’t hesitate in my response: next would be the de-funding of the nation's public broadcasting system. To me, it wasn’t a question of if…but when.
The threat to kill public broadcasting in the U.S. is not
the same as the killing of Voice of America. Through stations such as Radio
Free Europe, VOA had always been the mouthpiece of the U.S. state. It was
part of global U.S. soft power, promoting the nation's foreign policy and
economic interests. It was anything but objective, independent journalism.
PBS and NPR, on the other hand, are something entirely
different. They represent an alternative model for how media in the U.S. could
be…or, at least, could have been. Created in 1967 under President Lyndon
Johnson, and decades after private media giants ABC, NBC, and CBS had been
allowed to take near-complete control over U.S. broadcasting, the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting was meant to provide U.S. citizens with a
non-commercial media alternative.
Unlike their European counterparts, however, which began as
well-financed monopolies in the 1920s and 1930s, U.S. public media were born
weak. They were never meant to challenge the power of U.S. corporate media.
For the past half century, U.S. public broadcasting has existed at the margins of the national media ecosystem, producing high-quality educational programming and decent news that attracted a predominantly well-educated, urban audience.
Low levels of federal funding meant that U.S.
public broadcasting, again unlike European counterparts such as Sweden's SVT or
the UK's BBC, was forced to take money from corporations in order to survive.
When I lived in the U.S., PBS took so much "sponsorship” money from oil
companies such as ExxonMobil that
it was jokingly referred to as the “Petroleum Broadcasting System.”
So, why kill off the last remnants of a media system that
attracts only a tiny fraction of the U.S. audience and gets the majority of its
financing from non-government sources?
Simple. Because of what it represents.
The Trump administration and its oligarchy of advisors have
as their central goal to destroy or undermine any and all institutions in U.S.
society that either suggest an alternative to private, corporate control or
provide a counter-argument to the myth that the “free market” is the best
option for structuring U.S. society: from education to health care to media.
The very idea that the state could in any way contribute to the greater good is
horrific and must be crushed.
In its classic form, public service broadcasting of the type
we have here in Europe treats the inhabitants of the country not as potential
consumers, but as actual citizens. In modern societies, absolutely soaked in
the logic of consumption, there needs to be at least a few spaces where your
value is seen as inherent and not related to how much disposable income you
have.
Here in Sweden, for example, that includes not just public
broadcasting, but things like universal healthcare and university education.
The logic is simple: being informed, being healthy and being educated should
not be privileges restricted to those who can afford it. And, a well-informed,
healthy and well-educated society benefits everyone.
Public broadcasting in the U.S. is in need of serious
reform. And, public broadcasting in Europe isn’t perfect. But, despite their
various flaws, their value can be found not only in what they produce in terms
of content, but in what they tell people about how society can be structured.
That working alternatives exist and can co-exist. That it’s possible to have a
free market, but at the same time recognize there are some elements of society
too important to be left to the mercies of corporations, billionaires, and
profit margins.
For people like Trump and Musk, these non-commercial spaces
of citizenship are viruses eating away at profits. But they aren’t the virus.
They are the vaccine.
Christian Christensen, American in Sweden, is Professor of Journalism at Stockholm University. Follow him on Twitter: @ChrChristensen
