PBS will give you more of this…
If you think public television exists to offer challenging, independent news and public affairs shows that bring us the stories the commercial media too often ignore, free of the influence of big sponsors and corporate owners… well, this hasn’t been a good week.
On Monday came word that PBS viewers will get something new on Friday nights: More Charlie Rose. As Elizabeth Jensen reported (New York Times, 5/20/13), PBS will be offering a new show called Charlie Rose Weekend, that “will cull the best of his late-night program” along with some new material. The show will take the place of Need to Know, which some might recall was PBS‘s replacement for the generally excellent program Now, which it cancelled in 2009. The show’s first host was then-Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, as sure a sign as any that the show would probably not be doing the kind of independent journalism viewers had come to expect from Now.
So PBS has gone from Now to Need to Know to… Charlie Rose clips? Talk about sliding downhill.
…but none of this.
But that wasn’t the most explosive public TV news. Also breaking this week was Jane Mayer’s investigation (New Yorker, 5/27/13) into the influence of right-wing billionaire David Koch over PBS, particularly New York station WNET. The trouble started when documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney produced a film called Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream. It zeroed in on one address: 740 Park Avenue, and the very wealthy folks who live there. One of them is Koch. The film is pretty critical, and that appeared likely to pose some problems. You see, David Koch is a major funder of WNET as well as Boston’s WGBH, and he sits on the board of both. (Mayer also notes that “several relatives of WNET board members live at 740 Park,” suggesting that there could have been some sensitivities about the film outside of Koch).
David Koch. (cc photo: Fred Thompson)
WNET president Neil Shapiro “grew concerned” about the film once it started coming under criticism from a right-wing journalist, and called Koch to tip him off about the upcoming broadcast, offering him a chance to appear on a post-broadcast roundtable where he could, presumably, defend the interests of the super-rich. He declined, but WNET aired a brief response from Koch after the broadcast last fall–interesting, especially considering he had not watched it. WNET also gave Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer time for a response.
But at least that piece aired. The film Citizen Koch would evidently not be so lucky.
Gibney’s film came to WNET via the Independent Television Service (ITVS), which helps fund the work of documentary filmmakers and gets them national distribution via the series Independent Lens.
WNET‘s Shapiro was reportedly livid that ITVS did not give them enough warning about Park Avenue, and he apparently wouldn’t let that happen again. So when word began to circulate that Citizen Koch, a documentary by Carl Deal and Tia Lessin, was being produced with the help of ITVS, which gave the filmmakers $150,000, the Park Avenue experience was making people in public TV nervous; as one source told Mayer: “Because of the whole thing with the Koch brothers, ITVS knew WNET would never air it. Never.” While some at ITVS were sending encouraging messages, Mayer reports:
Other officials, though, kept urging the filmmakers to change the title, add negative material about Democrats and delete an opening sequence that showed Sarah Palin speaking at a rally sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, the Kochs’ main advocacy group.
In April, ITVS sent word that they decided not to move forward with the project. The filmmakers issued this response:
The film we made is identical in premise and execution to the written and video proposals that ITVS green-lit last spring. ITVS backed out of the partnership because they came to fear the reaction our film would provoke. David Koch, whose political activities are featured in the film, happens to be a public-television funder and a trustee of both WNET and WGBH. This wasn’t a failed negotiation or a divergence of visions; it was censorship, pure and simple.
David Koch’s funding of PBS has come up before on FAIR Blog, when Nova seemed to slipping a don’t-worry-be-happy message about global warming into a Koch-funded Nova program (“We’re not adapted to any one environment or climate, but to many; we are creatures of climate change”). Nova denied any connnection at the time–“Nova, like all WGBH programs, maintains complete, independent editorial control of its content”–a response that was hard to believe then and even harder to maintain with a straight face now.
It is essential that there be a firewall between donors and the content-makers. Period. There can be no favoritism as was apparently shown to David Koch. Our very democracy depends on the free exchange of ideas and the right to investigate any aspect of our society, especially people as powerful and as willing to meddle in our politics as the Koch brothers have been.
Here in OC, CA our PBS programming seems to have slightly improved. Democracy Now! and Bill Moyer’s program are rebroadcast. Again, you can’t blame the rich and the powerful. It’s their nature to be sociopathic – to try to control all messages that go out in the public domain. What is the excuse of the average American who allows him/herself to be seduced into passivity by Madison Ave propaganda.
Save public broadcasting
From itself
I’ve grown wary of PBS since Bush Junior’s term when they removed known liberal Bob Edwards to middle of the roader (veering to the right during the Bush administration) Steve Inskeep while Talk of the Nation host Neal Conan obviously supported the Iraq War and conducted hostile interviews of anti-Iraq war activists.
What is new about PBS taking dirty money ? the Ford Foundation which is also one of it’s biggest donor’s ,In 1967 it came out that the Ford Foundation was a money laundering front for the CIA .
It’s amusing, as in watching one’s own execution, the feigned surprise that “Public TV” is compromised by Corporate interests. Really?
If it helps, I’m offended by Charlie Rose.
the insufferable Charlie Ross is harmless, of course.
longtime elite insider Bill Moyers was a director of the CFR from 1967-1974. (Allen Dulles, Walter Lippmann, David Rockefeller, Zbigniew Brzezinski, George H. W. Bush, Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, and Dick Cheney have all been directors as well.)
Newshour anchor Margaret Warner is on the Board of Directors of the CFR. Jim Lehrer and Judy Woodruff are also members of the CFR.
Charlie Rose is a member of the CFR and a Bilderberg attendee
the purpose of the mass media in a totalitarian society is social control, not social change.
Here’s an interview of Ed Herman, co-author of Manufacturing Consent (published 25 years ago) on the propaganda model and the books significance today:
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=9977
Also recommended: everything by Michael Parenti
I think we need to blame PBS for having less of a backbone in these instances, but keep in mind also that Public Televisions cannot function at all without cash. As we all know, federal money for PBS/NPR is minuscule, so needs public funding. Public television has been under attack from the political right for decades in an attempt to starve it out of existence – that is to say, starve what they perceive as the liberal voice (it’s the same mentality behind attacks on universities). It would have died years ago save for the support of the public who believe in it and want it to continue. So if the Kock brothers and others like them pour big money into public television they know full well that means a certain degree of control. If you control the means, you can control the message. Murdoch didn’t buy papers because they were the best financial investment. Now with him disgraced – for the moment, someone with conservative money has to step in.
I agree we should let PBS know what we think. Tell them to get a backbone and refuse contributions that come with controls over the message. A free press is the most important thing in a free society. I strongly support PBS and NPR.
Oh give the puff master his due. Where else would you have heard the “good Doctor” Kissinger say that if W conducts the war in Iraq correctly it would mean US hegemony in the region for the next 30 years? Seriously, you think Moyers would have gotten him to say that.
As for the petroleum broadcasting system, since when was it not a corporate public relations outlet?
“Reality is a sound, you have to tune in to it not just keep yelling” –Anne Carson
Thanks for going after Charlie Rose. He certainly does not respect Amy Goodman of “Democracy Now.” He gives NC-trained journalists a bad name. I will take good old Charles Kuralt over Charlie Rose any day of the week. I bet Amy Goodman and Norman Finkelstein would too.
I watch WNET often (Charlie Rose I cannot watch more than five minutes without wanting to throw something at the TV) but will never give them a dime, not just because they prostitute themselves to the Kochs of the world but have for many decades demonstrated to be total sell outs to the mission of public television, and FAIR should stop reporting that reality as news.
Why the news and jouranlism should not be bought and sold or have adds. Straight news independent from the right wing Plutocrats who want only their feel good news and marketing ploys.
There’s so little quality programming on TV. I watch Masterpiece Theater programming and many other educational shows. But I lost respect for WGBG, PBS and NPR for caving in to Republican attacks and threats to cut federal funding. Now their news coverage is watered down with “fair and balanced reporting” (that feature unchallenged extreme views and misinformation). It’s unbearable to watch or listen. I agree with Anthony Vera’s comment that public television now “prostitutes (itself) to the Koch’s of the world” ….and “have for many decades demonstrated to be total sell outs to the mission of public television”.
I’m deeply concerned about Koch and his close ties to PBS. I emailed my local station 3 times before receiving the standard reply that PBs remains independent, blah, blah, blah. Frightening!
More Charlie Rose just extends the PBS Drone attack.
I think the McNeil Lehrer Report was OK a long time ago when Robert McNeil was alive. I was very lucky to go to Dana Hall in 1978 and to study French with his very, very smart daughter Tracy. She wanted to go to Middlebury. I hope that that is where she wound up. I got the impression from his reporting and from his daughter’s earnestness and very hard work that he was the real deal. Sorry that a lot of the rest have been sell outs.
The entire crux of the problem is in this line…
“…a public TV station is so afraid to offend one of its principal donors…”
TRULY public TV would have no donors but the public. It has always been troubling that ‘public’ TV is sponsored – just as much, and sometimes more, than commercial TV. We will never have truly public TV (and radio) systems unless there are absolutely no commercial donors whatsoever. And knowing the way PBS and NPR operate, that really will mean NEVER.
If anyone is truly surprised at this, they have been willfully ignoring the changes made to PBS ever since the Reagan administration.
it’s a crying shame we can’t even trust PBS any longer. These tyrants (Koch, et al) are ruling the world right under our noses. They and their ilk should be banned from owning any form of media or newspapers. These fascists want to brainwash us all. Help!
BUT I SAW THAT SHOW. PERHAPS ON CH 21. BACKING UP, WE MUST NOT FORGET THAT NOW, BILL MOYERS, AND WORLD FOCUS, WHICH HAD THE ONLY UNCENSORED COVERAGE OF THE GAZA WAR VIA AL JAZERA, WERE ALL PURGED ON ONE NIGHT. ONLY MOYERS WAS MENTIONED. AND HE’S BACK. BUT NOT TALKING ABOUT ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS. IT’S BORING ENOUGH TO LISTEN TO A CORPORATE GUY AGAINST A BANKER, BUT KOCH??? IT’S OK FOR HIM TO BUY LINCOLN CENTER, BUT NOT PBS. IS IT ONLY IN NEW YORK OR COUNTRYWIDE?
And I had thought that free speech was about good citizenship, not about big money looking out for it’s owners and their interests. Surprising there isn’t more “competition” for the Boards at WNET and WGBH, or are these sold to the highest bidder? Thank you for the news behind the news. One more thing: when did C.Rose join CFR, and why doesn’t he disclose this trivial fact when he pretends to represent the views of Americans?
Are you listening WGBH, PBS and NPR?
The only way to rid the world of the corrupt and fascist international corporatocracy is to criminalize greed by capping the amount of wealth any one person can have and either nationalizing the corporations or converting them all to non-profits. I would limit individual wealth to $2 million, but in a REAL democracy, we could debate what the limit should be.
The Koch’s have dominated much of PBS for quite some time now, especially in the junk science scene with all of their documentaries that basically amounts to climate change denying with a tint of religious zealotry. They are the poster children for replacing religion with actual science in our school system as Bush tried to do. Meanwhile real documentaries like Citizen Koch are squashed. I also note the major changes concerning Need to Know which de-fanged Now into obscurity. Note also the government has been regularly defunding public TV giving opened door policies to people like the billionaire Koch brothers and other giant pro right corporations to take it over. I remember them trying to get rid of Bill Moyers too, the only show in my view that tells us the truth about things major media never talks about. Charlie Rose is a shill, a reasonable neoconservative, nothing more. CBS and it’s Morning Show is more like an infomercial than actual news. It’s entertainment geared around the wonderful corporate world we must accept as the only way of doing things or rationalizing them when most of us realize this wonderful world they keep telling us about is basically fantasy. It is a crime what has happened to PBS! An even bigger crime was Reagan deregulating the FCC, giving the “free” airwaves of America to Rupert Murdoch, Comcast and a handful of other communications giants, virtually destroying independent news broadcasting and consolidating all of it under these lying billionaires. PBS was the last vestige, but as we can see no more. The former sanctuaries of real investigative journalism are nearly all gone now. Only the fluff and sensationalism of the conservative power wealth who are calling all the shots that dictate virtually every aspect of our now tumultuous lives, that is if we live below a certain economic status.
When Alison Stewart was in charge of doing stories on “Need to Know”, it was quite excellent. “Now” under David Brancaccio was awful. As soon as Alison Stewart was fired or left, “Need to Know” shifted to a half hour and was made to have more right wing guests. Shameful!
And here we go talking more nonsense about those dastardly koch brothers.Again with the smoke screens.Well I suppose two men who are willing to bring their money to the table to allow for the conservative side of the coin, would be looked at as enemies one and two to the progressive hate mongers.
We don’t live in a democracy; we live in a plutocratic oligopoly .
PBS at one time tried to be balanced – what the right is apt to call “liberal”. But that was before Newt Gingrich came on the scene in the early 1990’s. Under his leadership, the House held hearings on how to make PBS get off the public dole; after all, it had been around long enough to be able to find corporate sponsors and so it should no longer need any public funding.
I remember these hearings pretty clearly but what I don’t remember as well was hearing about any serious opposition to that change. Maybe such opposition was there but whether or not it was, the liberal media was not reporting on it.
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Petition-Demand That The Stars Disconnect From Charlie Rose
I was also concerned about this..U see the “Koch”name pop up in the credits for sum show’s..Take last night on the “Charlie Rose show”.He filmed hs interview or should i say hs interrogation of Senator Bernie Sanders frm hs CBS daytime Gig..WTF..His whole interview was proberly dictated by CBS who cant be 2fond of Bernie Sanders and hd plans,so naturally they were calling the Tune,judging by the tone of Rose’s interview.yet,we were suppposed 2b watching Charlie Rose on the PBS..A definite conflict of interest and ethos…I did call the PBS ombudsmens office and left a message..Totally deceitful and unethical.