Jack Shafer has been banging on about how terrible he thinks PBS news is—in particular, we recall his cheap shots at Lehrer’s News Hour. His main problem seems to be that it makes him sleepy. There’s no pleasing Shafer, apparently—because if it’s not a spectacular ethical lapse in the showers with Biill O’Reilly, then its the transgression of being too tweedy and unsexy. For our part, we like the thoughtful, civilized, literate News Hour. It is the efforts to update the program salaciously—particularly by employing blowhards like Brooks and Shields—that ultimately are the weakest elements in the program. Maybe it could stand an infusion of quirkiness—God knows, a show like Almanac is spilling over with little else—but this is hardly a deal-breaker. We like News Hour just fine the way it is; it’s the only TV news we can stomach, even if we have to shut our eyes when Ray Suarez is onscreen (to believe its really him).
We disagree with Shafer’s thoughtful piece at Slate this week on defunding and decommissioning the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. His is a cogent and pursuasive argument (although seemingly designed to steer me into a late morning nap—hey, live by the sword, die by the sword, Jack) that politicians tampering with media is a bad thing. And yet, at the same time, he claims that the partisan lens is as good as any through which to view the world. By way of example, Shafer writes:
“Now under Moyers polled conservatives for their views, while the Editorial Report mostly reiterates the Wall Street Journal editorial-page line. Yet editorial “balance” is not what either show needs—both benefit from looking at current events through ideological lenses. I’d rather watch a Miele soak cycle than view either program sanitized to CPB charter standards.”
Aside from Shafer here revealing himself to be a domestic snob (Miele? Good God, man, that’s no way to curry populist outrage), this strikes on a growing consciousness among readers, editors, and media critics that the whole conceit of “balance” in reporting is silly and itself has a skewing effect. One fine Times letter-writer described equal-opportunity journalism as “pitting a saint against a horse thief and saying ‘only time will tell,’” which is the neatest metaphor we’ve heard in connection with this issue of tit-for-tat sourcing.) This all sounds like a red herring, as far as we’re concerned. Sure there are egregious examples, but it is hardly a trend, and we figure that when it does happen, it probably happens for all the right reasons.
We think the CPB provides for a constant, annual checking mechanism each time funding comes up—resulting in the usual articles in publications like the Times and Slate. Ultimately, funding is nonpartisan—or at least bi-partisan. Yes, in contentionous times where there is a tyranny of the majority, there are good reasons to worry that “balance” is merely a federal bludgeon to bang PBS programming firmly to the right of center, but the government’s involvement is a guarantee of a certain amount of transparency that does not exist in the commercial media world.
It is no accident that the whole world outside US borders (and much of it within US borders) still considers the gold standard of news not ABC, NBC, or CBS—but the publicly funded BBC. What is the closest thing Americans have to the BBC, not in terms of funding, but in terms of quality, balance, authoritativeness, and substance—the American standard by which all others are measured, every time someone grinds out a study of journalism standards and practices? It is NPR and PBS.
We think Lehrer is a fine example of high-quality journalism and we feel confident that the News Hour can be entrusted to weigh balance against fairness. Part of the job of broadcasting the news is the wisdom to lay out the facts and analysis in a considered way which clearly points to the truth while ackowledging any lingering, legitimate doubts—not from the flat-earthers or the creationists but from thoughtful, serious dissenters with substantive evidence for a contrary interpretation of the facts.
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