http://sivekmedia.com/2009/07/04/rethinking-independence-and-our-media/ Blog of Susan Currie Sivek, Ph.D., on media, journalism, and higher education. Wed, 02 May 2012 16:06:45 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://sivekmedia.com/2009/07/04/rethinking-independence-and-our-media/#comment-3 Sat, 04 Jul 2009 20:10:47 +0000 http://sivekmedia.com/?p=79#comment-3 True, and PBS’s challenge is that its funding is tenuous and bound to political interests, so its coverage falls within a narrow, “safe” ideological range. We need to find ways to fund public media that do not rely on politicians’ votes, given their greater commitment to maintaining the support of their corporate campaign donors. Some options are described in an article attached to the PBS show MediaShift’s Web site; it describes options for diverse funding sources. However, this article doesn’t seem to encourage using tax dollars to support public media, despite mentioning that “Other democracies outspend the United States by huge margins per capita: Canada 16 times more; Germany 20 times more; Japan 43 times more; Britain 60 times more; Finland and Denmark 75 times more.” A vital public media system could do so much to support our democracy, but the concept is not widely acknowledged as worthy of our tax money.

]]> http://sivekmedia.com/2009/07/04/rethinking-independence-and-our-media/#comment-2 Sat, 04 Jul 2009 19:50:16 +0000 http://sivekmedia.com/?p=79#comment-2 I agree with your assessment of the problems in the media today. “a souped-up, politically independent remodel of PBS” That’s been a day-dream of mine for awhile. They are dealing with almost exclusively moderate right wing voices and coverage but the party is not very moderate and has not been for years. It all adds up to bias from PBS, I’d call it the Bias of Omission.

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