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Public Broadcasting: America’s Most Credible Source Of Public Affairs Programming
Thanks to programs like FRONTLINE, PBS Has Earned A Substantial Increase In Government Funding. Donate today — then email your Senator or Congressman to ask that PBS be financially strengthened.
The journalistic gap between public broadcasting and commercial television has steadily widened in the last decade. The implications flowing from failed journalism in general, and television news in particular, are as clear as they are compelling. Just as bankers, brokerages, car makers, drug companies, and others flagrantly breached the public trust with devastating damage to ordinary citizens, commercial media, especially, but not exclusively television broadcasting, has done the same by making profit their sole mission.
So who is it that is least funded and uncertain of its future? PBS — whose men and women work in television to make a difference, not to be an entertainer, or to pocket a multi-million dollar salary.Robert Butche
Boston
Probative News Moves to Public Media
Whether there is a cause and effect relationship reamins unclear, but the slow-motion death of commercial television news has occurred even as the journalistic voice of public broadcasting has bloomed. It’s not that public media have gained a new voice as much as it is that they never lost theirs. But there’s more to the migration of serious and probative news and public affairs programming away from commercial television in favor of public media. Funding and support have to some degree weakened even as reportorial and editorial quality has strengthened — especially at NPR ( National Public Radio ) and PBS ( Public Broadcasting Service ).
No suggestion is being made that public television fully, or even adequately covers world and national news — for that is clearly not the case. But what it may lack in breadth is offset to a large degree by more critical measures — credibility, seriousness and depth. But news is only one part of public media’s news and information programming. The other part is Public Affairs coverage — and in this area, PBS has not only excelled, it has demonstratively raised the bar.
PBS — Public Affairs Programming
FRONTLINE on FRONTLINE
Here’s how FRONTLINE producers see themselves:
When FRONTLINE was born the prospects for television news documentaries looked grim. Pressure was on network news departments to become profitable, and the spirit of outspoken journalistic inquiry established by programs like Edward R. Murrow’s See It Now and Harvest of Shame had given way to entertainment values and feature-filled magazine shows. Therefore, it fell to public television to pick up the torch of public affairs and carry on this well-established broadcast news tradition.
Since its inception, FRONTLINE has never shied away from tough, controversial issues or complex stories. In an age of anchor celebrities and snappy sound bites, FRONTLINE remains committed to providing a primetime venue for engaging documentaries that fully explore and illuminate the critical issues of our times. FRONTLINE remains the only regularly scheduled long-form public affairs documentary series on American television, producing more hours of documentary programming than all the commercial networks combined.
PBS’ Public Affairs programming lineup is extensive, if uneven in quality or openness of political viewpoint. News and information programming generally benefits from having a political bias — unless, as is the overall case with PBS’ New York produced content that bias is neither subtle or balanced. For most purposes, PBS’ Washington produced content ( NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and Washington Week with Gwen Ifill ) are the more balanced, but often times the least confrontational or demanding.
New York produced programming is mixed in terms of production quality — at least between NOW! With David Brancacchio and Bill Moyer’s Journal which shines in comparison. For purposes of this discussion, The McLaughlin Report, produced by Oliver Productions is not included largely because it falls outside the bounds of probative news and information programming.
FrontLine — Documentaries Worthy Of A Great Nation
PBS’ premiere investigative instrument, FRONTLINE, is produced by WGBH in Boston. It is clearly the finest broadcast documentary on the air today. One reason is that in its 26th season, FRONTLINE is the sole, regularly scheduled television documentary on American television. It’s easy to be top in your class when there class has only one member. It’s another to have achieved what many might have thought impossible — to become the most probative, credible and authoritative television documentary in the history of television.
Since it’s first broadcast in 1983, FRONTLINE has been overseen by Executive Producer David Fanning whose vision and energy has produced some 490 documentary films under the FRONTLINE banner. Fanning fits the mold of a responsible adult who expects those working with him to be accurate, reliable, probative and accountable. By the time Fanning aired his first FRONTLINE film in 1983, the commercial networks were busy abolishing their once sacred statements of journalistic standards.
Today FRONTLINE is the only television news and information program that publishes and enforces a detailed statement of journalistic standards, styles and practices.
For the last 20 years, Louis Wiley Jr. has served as FRONTLINE’s Executive Editor. Louis Wiley drafted WGBH’s guidelines on Journalistic Standards and Practices for National Programming and its Web Code of Best Practices. Today it is Wiley who oversees and monitors FRONTLINE’s story selection process as well as final edit approval of every program.
If you’ve not yet watched the FRONTLINE program at the top of this article, be sure you do. Then you’ll know that when responsible and accountable adults are in charge of broadcast news and public affairs programming, credibility and probity deliver on the promise of excellence in electronic journalism.