The Open Mind: Bill Moyers Journal... The Conversation Continues

Friday, November 25, 2011 by The Open Mind / PBS

Originally aired on July 9, 2011

Watch Bill Moyers Journal... The Conversation Continues on PBS. See more from THE OPEN MIND.

The McLaughlin Group

I love it when they all bark at the same time, but they make some really good, hard points. Check it out.

House Votes To Cut All of NPR's Federal Funds

March 17, 2011 - by Mark Memmott

The House of Representatives just voted 228-192 to bar NPR from receiving any more federal funds. It was a partisan vote, with Republicans voting "aye" and Democrats voting "nay."
As NPR's Audie Cornish reported earlier:

"Two percent of NPR's revenue comes through competitive grants from federal agencies — in the commerce and education departments, for example. But [NPR] member station fees make up another 40 percent of revenue. And the House bill would bar stations from using any federal funds for NPR.
"Republicans on the House Rules Committee said the move to defund the organization this week was sparked by the controversial and edited videos of NPR executives speaking disparagingly of conservatives, and saying NPR did not need federal funding."

As for what happens next, The National Journal says that "Republican efforts to cut off federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and NPR are unlikely to advance past the House, as both Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and the White House are weighing in with their opposition."

Politico does some play-by-play of the lively debate on the House floor.

Update at 3:45 p.m. ET. Breaking Down The Vote:
No Democrats voted in favor of cutting the funds — all 228 "aye" votes were from Republicans. Seven Republicans voted against the cut. See the roll call here.

Update at 4:25 p.m. ET. The One "Present" Vote Explains His Thinking:
Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) cast the only "present" vote on the legislation. Amash, one of the House's most active users of social media, writes on his a long note on his Facebook page about why he did that.

"I want to defund NPR. But I want to do it the right way, in accordance with the Rule of Law," he says. He says that:

"The bill's treatment of NPR is arguably unconstitutional and definitely violates the Rule of Law. The bill is arguably unconstitutional because it likely is a bill of attainder. Art. I, Sec. 9, of the Constitution prohibits Congress from passing bills of attainder. The idea behind the bill of attainder ban is that Congress shouldn't enact laws meant to punish particular persons or entities, because the proper way to punish a wrongdoer is after the accused has been given a chance to defend himself at trial in a court. After the federal government similarly singled out ACORN, a federal court ruled the defunding was an unconstitutional bill of attainder. A federal appellate court reversed, but on grounds specific to the facts of the case.
"Whether or not H R 1076 is a bill of attainder, passing such a bill violates the Rule of Law."

 

Not much "public" about "public television" these days...

PBS Just as Corporate, White, Male and Republican as Commercial TV
by Lauren Kelley

There’s not much public about public television these days.

According to a multi-part report in the latest issue of Extra! magazine, published by media watchdog group FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting), PBS is not the indie alternative to corporate-owned television it once was. In fact, in many ways, PBS now is corporate-owned television. At the same time, many PBS shows’ guest lists are woefully non-diverse.

It’s not exactly news that PBS is suckling at the corporate teat (we wrote about that a whole decade ago). But the FAIR exposé sheds light on some new and disturbing findings:

NewsHour, the network’s signature show, is mostly privately owned, despite being known as “public TV’s nightly newscast”; since 1994, the for-profit conglomerate Liberty Media has held a controlling stake in the show. Likewise, the Nightly Business Report was sold to a private company earlier this year, and details of the sale by public station WPBT are still largely unknown to the, um, public.

NewsHour viewers were five times as likely to see corporate representatives than guests from “public interest groups who might counterweigh such moneyed interests – labor, consumer and environmental organizations.” Although Democrats outnumbered Republicans as guests on the show by nearly 2-to-1, Republicans were featured more prominently than Democrats (3-to-2) in the longer-format, live segments. An earlier study showed that Republicans were featured more than Democrats overall when the GOP controlled the White House and Congress.

NewsHour’s guest list was 82% white and 80% male, with women and people of color appearing far more often in “person on the street” interviews than in any positions of authority. Appearances by women of color actually declined by a third since 2006.

The guest list for Need to Know, the news magazine that replaced Now and Bill Moyers Journal (RIP), didn’t fare any better in the pale male department. During the first three months of the show, the guest list was 78% white, 70% male and featured a corporate-representative-to-activist ratio of 20 to 12. Black people were “overwhelmingly” tied to stories on drugs and crime.

As the report points out, PBS has strayed quite far from the original tenets of public television: to give voice to those “who would otherwise go unheard” and help viewers “see America whole, in all its diversity.”

FCC Should Not Dictate Programming

Genachowski Says commission will be "active partner" in supporting public media
By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 4/30/2010

The FCC will be an "active partner" in supporting public media as one response to a crisis in journalism, says FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, but he also said that "this agency cannot and should not dictate programming."

Saying that whatever the FCC does, it must be "in the full spirit of the First Amendment," the chairman added that "nothing should ever be done to hobble the independence of the press."

That came in opening remarks from the chairman at a daylong workshop on the future of "Public and Other Noncommercial Media in the Digital Era," the commission's second workshop in its ongoing review of the future of media.

The first workshop focused on commercial media.

Genachowski said several seismic shifts were occurring simultaneously, prompting profound change in both noncommercial and commercial media.

He said those changes have disrupted models of journalism and threatened to create a crisis for democracy. He also said it was not about preserving the journalistic industry or journalist's paychecks, but about the citizen's access to local news and information.

The broadband plan proposes creating a media trust fund powered by what the chairman said would be "voluntary spectrum auctions."

He said he was pleased to see noncoms working together. "Keep it up," he said. "This is a big moment, and the nation is depending on you to rise to it."

Commissioner Michael Copps called it a great day, with as impressive a group as had ever been assembled at the FCC--it included the heads of CBP and PBS.

Copps said there were two problems: the "very immediate" challenge facing traditional media "on life support, where there is still life." The second, he said, was the future of online media. But he said they were actually one challenge: "Making sure that we have the information infrastructure that provides citizens what they need to know so they can make intelligent decisions about their future."

He called public media the jewel of American broadcasting, and said it was amazing what they did with the "poverty" of funding for the system.

CPB Chair Ernest Wilson, one of the panelists at the workshop, said noncom broadcasting needs to morph into public service media that uses new technological tools and platforms.

But he said tools are not enough. They also need the wisdom to use it wisely, and the courage to provide public interest information. But that will mean discarding old practices and institutions.

He said that if noncoms continue to do this, democracy will be strengthened. "We are not yet fully a public service media," he said, but he also said they were beyond, and better, than simply public "broadcasting." We have to do digital, dialog and diversity, he said, and to do that will need a fourth D: dollars.

Genachowski's reassurance that the FCC was not out to dictate content was a response to critics of the future of media inquiry who fear that government support will morph into government influence.

For example, Randolph May, president of think tank Free State Foundation, another panelist, planned to tell the FCC that it should be looking for an exit strategy for public media, rather that contemplate expanding its role.

"I am opposed to expansion of funding for public broadcasting, or for 'repurposing' government funds to support other public media, such as websites," he said, according to his prepared testimony. "Indeed, given the unprecedented national debt (almost $13 trillion) and competing budgetary demands facing the country, maybe this is a moment in time when reasonable people can agree that, in light of the media marketplace changes, an 'exit strategy' should be set for reducing or eliminating funding of public media."

Frontline Fronts for Corporations...

...Not the Public

By Dr. MARGARET FLOWERS, M.D.

It was with a sense of déjà vu that I watched the latest Frontline documentary about health care. “Obama’s Deal” endeavored to reveal the significant influence of health industry dollars on our political process; however, as in Frontline’s "Sick Around America," the producers did a disservice by the failure to educate the public about the bigger picture of the health care situation in this nation and the range of possible solutions.

Curiously, just as it was in the health “debate,” single payer, improved Medicare for All, was also excluded from the film. The major point of the influence of health industry dollars on the reform process which should have been mentioned is that these dollars were spent in order to restrict the debate and protect industry profits. The lucrative status quo would have been threatened if single payer had been openly discussed because a publicly-financed national health program can provide high quality universal health care and control health care costs, something that a private insurance based system cannot accomplish.

After watching this film, viewers would have no idea that single payer exists or know that there is a strong movement for it. Considering that there have been attempts to push for a national health program for over 100 years in this nation and that, because of a strong grassroots movement, single payer legislation was nearly introduced on the floor of the House in November and was actually introduced on the floor of the Senate for the first time in this nation last December, the omission appears to be intentional.

Those of us in the single payer movement are accustomed to being censored by the corporate media. The reason for our exclusion is known: health insurance and pharmaceutical corporations advertise heavily on these airwaves and wield considerable power over the programming. This was described clearly by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting’s August 2009 piece titled “Single-Payer & Interlocking Directorates: The corporate ties between insurers and media companies” by Kate Murphy.

The producers at Frontline carefully cut single payer out of the film. When the host, Mr. Kirk, interviewed me for “Obama’s Deal,” we spoke extensively of the single payer movement and my arrest with other single payer advocates in the Senate Finance Committee last May. However, our action in Senate Finance was then misidentified as “those on the left” who led a “counterattack” because of “liberal outrage” at being excluded. This occurred despite an email exchange following the release of the preview in which I specifically requested that the producers identify that we are a nonpartisan group fighting for single payer: a health reform model based on evidence of what is effective here and abroad and on health policy principles. This mischaracterization unfortunately mirrors the way in which the health industry has portrayed the single payer movement (verified by Wendell Potter, a former Cigna executive).

“Obama’s Deal” contained a segment on those who oppose health reform, but nowhere were single payer advocates given a chance to explain their proposal or motivations. Neither was it noted that the hatred and fear seen at the summer Town Halls and that factored in the election of Scott Brown were assisted by the stealth organizing efforts of ultra-conservative Dick Armey of FreedomWorks and others.

We have the resources in this nation to achieve the same high quality health outcomes and health security that exist in other advanced nations. One reason for our failure is the intentional misinformation and omission of information in corporate media. Our public media does a disservice by leaving out the full picture of our broken political process, its effect on the health and economic wellbeing of our people and the truth of what we can achieve.

Copyright Criminals