Freepik assets
People holding a fireman's life net to catch the NPR and PBS logos.
I have a strange relationship with public broadcasting. I consume a lot of it and it drives me crazy.
It’s like the restaurant reviewer who said of a new bistro, “the food here is terrible. And such small portions!”
I thought NPR and PBS had a liberal bias even back when I was a liberal. In fact, it was the very reason I tuned it in the first place. But over the years those networks lurched even further left while I moved gently toward the center. Now, the worldview expressed by public broadcasting is miles to the left of my own.
And yet, I listen and I watch. I suppose I do that because, as compared to everything else out there, public broadcasting’s style of journalism is still relatively sedate, dignified and serious. There’s no breathless “breaking overnight!” When a minor celebrity that you thought was already dead actually dies “tributes” do not “pour in.” A run of the mill storm front does not put “40 million people under threat of horrible death from drowning!”
In addition, stories usually go for several minutes while it’s not unusual for the legacy network news shows to give 30 seconds to the war in Gaza and three minutes to the kid who got a guitar from Brad Paisley. For all of public broadcasting’s faults, it has not degenerated into tabloid journalism.
Moreover, I think of it as research because public broadcasting is the very sound of what’s wrong with the Democratic Party and why it loses elections it should win. The narrative of public broadcasting is all about identity and victimhood. Theirs is a simplistic world of noble victims and evil oppressors. Moreover they get it wrong. The dividing line in America today is not race and gender, but years of education. Public broadcasting speaks to a liberal, college-educated elite, so it’s no wonder that it ignores the privileges of education and instead emphasizes race and gender.
So, now that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has been defunded and is in the process of disbanding I’m conflicted. I think they had it coming, but still I’d like to see public broadcasting survive.
They had this coming because they refused to take legitimate charges of liberal bias seriously. Conservatives have been making that accusation for decades, pretty much since the CPB was created by Lyndon Johnson in the late 1960s. Most recently one of NPR’s own veteran editors, Uri Berliner, wrote a lengthy and thoughtful piece outlining the bias he witnessed from inside. NPR responded by forcing him to resign.
That has been the consistent response for four decades. To accusations of liberal bias, the answer is always “no, we’re not.” Well, yes, you are. I certainly hear it every day. As Berliner reported, in 2023 67% of NPR’s listeners described themselves as very or somewhat liberal, up from 37% in 2011. People tend to go to news sources that reaffirm their own views. If you don’t think so, how do you explain Fox News?
I had hoped that Congress would pull support from NPR and PBS, but leave in place funding for local stations. My favorite public station is WXPR in Rhinelander, a cozy mash up of NPR programs and eclectic music shows hosted by local volunteers. In Madison terms, it’s WERN meets WORT.
WXPR got about 25% of its funding from the feds. Now that that’s going away their listeners are stepping up. I increased my own monthly contribution amount and sent them a little extra during their most recent on air fund drive. I suppose the station will have to make some cuts, but I don’t think it will disappear. I hope they will drop some of the expensive NPR programming and substitute more local news and music shows. For example, while there are plenty of volunteer music hosts, the station could easily have volunteer-hosted talk shows. It could become more like WORT and less like WERN. I can get news on what’s going on in Washington from a lot of sources — not so much about what’s happening in Watersmeet.
Frankly, even if public broadcasting wasn’t biased, I can’t think of a good reason that taxpayers should fund it. Maybe it made some sense a half century ago, but now with so many choices widely available online, I just don’t see the justification. For example, I like jazz. In 1968 that would have been hard to find in the north woods on any commercial radio station. But now, I can find it any time of the day from lots of choices online. WXPR broadcasts a great syndicated jazz show at noon on weekdays and a really nice locally hosted show on Sunday afternoons, but if that went away (and I hope it won’t) I’d still have plenty of choices.
So, public broadcasting is taking a hit. It has itself to blame. But it’ll survive in some form. For example, with taxpayer funding gone I’m not sure what makes it “public” anymore. If it comes up with a new name please make it better then MSNOW.
It will probably have to retreat a bit, but with liberal foundations and liberal listeners (and me) already stepping up, I’m confident that it will come back perhaps stronger than ever.
All things considered, that’s as it should be.
Dave Cieslewicz is a Madison- and Upper Peninsula-based writer who served as mayor of Madison from 2003 to 2011. You can read more of his work at Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos.
