“I don't understand why they call it Public Broadcasting. There's nothing public about it. It's an elitist institution — Rush Limbaugh is public broadcasting.” — Newt Gingrich

US spending on public broadcasting, at just $1 per citizen each year compared with over $30 in Japan and nearly $40 in Great Britain, is already meager. But now the Republican majorities in Congress are aiming to end the government subsidy altogether. Denounced for its liberal bias and pointy-headed elitism, public television and radio have become the latest whipping boy in the Right's drive to leave the market as gatekeeper of the nation's opinions.

Yet, as this engrossing history by Village Voice columnist James Ledbetter reveals, the radicalism which permeated both the vision and the practice of public television in its early days has long since withered. Gone are the heady days of the early 1970s when the adventurous New York-based NET (funded, surprisingly, by the heirs of Henry Ford) could broadcast sympathetic interviews with Kathleen Cleaver and Louis Farrakhan or highly critical documentaries of US foreign policy like “Inside North Vietnam.” Obsessive harassment by the Nixon and Reagan administrations saw public television's management repeatedly compromise their editorial freedom in a forlorn attempt to maintain funding. Politically safe children's shows like Sesame Street elbowed aside controversial documentaries and dramas. But the funding cuts could not be stalled and the public broadcasters turned more and more to private sponsorship for their programs - to the point, Ledbetter caustically reports, where they are now as much in the pocket of US corporations as their commercial rivals.

Is what is left of public broadcasting worth saving? “I'm with Gingrich on this one,” says Alexander Cockburn. “Public television insults its audience,” concurs Lewis Lapham. Ledbetter prefers to signal what is required for a genuinely democratic broadcasting service - a network that serves its audience rather than its sponsors.

“A sharp, persuasive analysis of public broadcasting's decline and fall.” -- David Futrelle, Newsday

“Ledbetter's view is balanced, his eye is cold and sharp, and his research is exhaustive.” — Stephen Stark, Washington Post

“Ledbetter's refusal to hide behind Big Bird is refreshing; his recommendations are cogent.” — Martha Bayles, New York Times

“Crammed with newsy incidents and amazing quotes, it also comes equipped with a large, helpful bibiliography.” — Richard Buell, Boston Globe

James Ledbetter is a staff journalist on New York's Village Voice where he writes the “Press Clips” column. He has contributed to The Nation, The Washington Post and Mother Jones among other publications.

288 pages

Cloth
ISBN_13: 978 1 85984 904 0
£25 / US$25 / CAN$33

Paper
ISBN-13: 978 1 85984 029 0
£10 / US$15 /CAN$21