Not So Public Broadcasting
Rob Wojtasiewicz

Steve Cleary's article, Not So Public Broadcasting, published in this issue of The Lemming, underscores a sad situation that's been developing in this country for the last 10 years.

The original idea of public-owned media was to prevent any one group or viewpoint from gaining control of the press. In theory, anyone has access to public media. In theory the word "Public," as it pertains to the press, refers to the immediate listening audience. So in theory, decisions regarding the programming of publicly owned radio and television stations should be made entirely by the local population.

Unfortunately, there's a world-sized gap between the theory and the reality of public media. The reality is that although individual stations have their own boards of directors, many of the decisions regarding programming come from people far removed from the local communities. The reality is, it can be extremely difficult to get access to the public media. The reality is, the people who run these stations often do so in a proprietary manner, and the only time it becomes "YOUR" station is during the annual begging festivals. The reality is, in the last 10 years corporate interests have almost completely co-opted the dispersal of news by the so-called public media.

Of course, some stations are worse than others. Here in Fairbanks, we have a pretty good public radio and television station, all things considered. But KUAC's license is held by the University of Alaska Board of Regents, who mostly represent corporate interests. Sure enough, during the recent controversy in Anchorage, a local Green Party representative offered KUAC Radio a live radio interview with Mr. Nader, but was rebuffed. How can a responsible news department reject an interview with the presidential candidate from a national political party? According to the Green Party representative, he was told, "We'll wait and see what KSKM [Anchorage's public station] does about all this..."

While KUAC's management seems to have their hearts in the right place (despite the possible misplacement of their vertebrae), this does not seem to be the case in Anchorage. According to a former KAKM TV employee: "Things might have been different nationally at one time, but here in Alaska, public TV signed on with the oil age. It has never challenged big oil or the political structure in Juneau. When politics or oil controversy got hot, public TV folded almost every time, especially in Anchorage."

KAKM's management has a long history of dual involvement with Oil, and that's what really worries me. Where ten or twenty years ago this might be a cause for concern, nowadays corporate involvement in public media is the norm. This is the result of both the Gingrich Congress and the Clinton Administration. While president Clinton made every possible effort to strengthen Corporate America, Gingrich and his group made a special effort to hamstring public broadcasting. They threatened to cut off funding altogether, and suggested that public media would be better funded through corporate sponsorship. Almost overnight, national news broadcasts over the Public Broadcasting System changed. News coverage became diffused, and the traditional hard edges of controversial stories were smoothed. Once the folks at PBS toed the line, Congress cut loose on the purse strings a bit and co-optment was complete.

So greed and selfishness have once again prevailed over community and cooperation. What was founded in the spirit of lofty idealism and impartiality has now degenerated into just another arm of the corporate oligarchy that's gobbling up the world. I just can't stop thinking of words John Kay wrote thirty years ago:

Yeah, there's a monster on the loose
It's got our head into a noose
And it just sits there watching...

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