The Armstrong Williams NewsHour
Scary stuff going on behind the scenes in public broadcasting these days. I don't normally talk politics here, but this New York Times op-ed piece about the current goings-on at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting directly affects what you may be seeing on television in the future.
That doesn't mean the right's new assault on public broadcasting is toothless, far from it. But this time the game is far more insidious and ingenious. The intent is not to kill off PBS and NPR but to castrate them by quietly annexing their news and public affairs operations to the larger state propaganda machine that the Bush White House has been steadily constructing at taxpayers' expense. If you liked the fake government news videos that ended up on local stations - or thrilled to the "journalism" of Armstrong Williams and other columnists who were covertly paid to promote administration policies - you'll love the brave new world this crowd envisions for public TV and radio.
2 Comments:
Much as I enjoy the offerings of public television past and present, I'd rather see it shut down entirely than to see its continued existence as a propaganda machine. Of course, that's what the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was created to prevent, but . . . .
I think there's a world of difference between the obvious (social) liberal bias (as I recall, most NPR listeners are fiscally conservative and socially liberal) that has dominated NPR for the last 20 years and the sort of hijinks we've seen coming out of the Bush administration. Jeff Gannon and Armstrong Williams are just two egregious examples of disturbing propaganda efforts. I'm honestly worried about the state of journalism and the free press in this country -- not that NPR/PBS represents the independent press, but if we're going to have it we should make honest efforts to keep it from being The Administration Channel.
I don't want to get too far drawn into this because this isn't a blog about politics, but I want it to be clear: I'm drubbing the Bush administration for its methods, not its ideologies. If the men in power now really were conservatives in the traditional sense of the word, I think the U.S. would be a different place right now.
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