Should we fund public broadcasting?

Several months ago when Facebook questions were just starting to get traction, I answered one of the first questions that popped up in my stream (I can’t seem to unfollow it now but I’ll leave this for another post). The question, posted by the Common Language Project, was “Should NPR’s federal funding be cut?” After pondering over it for a minute and thinking about the small proportion of funds that actually come from the government I cast my vote. I reasoned that NPR’s federal funding should be cut because I don’t think it’s a vital part of NPR’s operating budget and because I believe that it should be “listener powered” much like KEXP here in Seattle.

The Media Monopoly by Ben H. Bagdikian made me revisit my previous stance on “federal funding” and forced me to look at it more as “public funding”. Some of Bagdikian’s rant has been abolished or “disrupted” by the Internet however there are several timeless pieces that are still worth thinking about. I think there is still a false limitation between broadcasting being perceived either as “government propaganda” or commercial broadcasting (“two-model fallacy”) and would argue that if anything it’s only grown stronger in recent years. I also agree that objections to public broadcasting are primarily ideological but as economic issues continue to come to the forefront, ideological battles for privatization framed in-terms of budget cuts become a winning strategy. It will be quite fascinating to look back at the current debates and to see how our economic status influenced our public policies.

I was surprised to learn that Belgium and the Netherlands guarantee public organizations access to broadcast time based on the size of their memberships. This seems somewhat like a few of the European countries including Finland and Estonia that have ruled that internet access is a fundamental human right for citizens. This got me thinking about net neutrality which immediately struck me as the logical extension of Bagdikian’s argument. If we replace, “airwaves” with “internet” this sentence has new meaning: “The airwaves do not belong to the broadcasters. They do not belong to the advertisers. The owners, by law, are the people of the United States.” I would argue that while the internet has become a global information highway, US tax payers are primarily responsible for its funding and thus it belongs to the the people of the United States the same as the airwaves. A few weeks ago I came across a fascinating article titled “What did the Internet cost?” The 200+ comments that have been left provide interesting insights into how the public perceives these costs… A few of my favorites include “It costs me about $30 a month” and ”Take all the publicly traded ISPs’ operating costs for 2010. That is the cost of the internet for 2010.” This last one is quite interesting considering that unlike radio and TV broadcasting, there are no federally funded ISPs’.

I was also somewhat surprised that Japan’s Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK) was created by the United States after WWII. It seems ironic yet when we look at similar efforts made in Iraq it becomes obvious that history is only repeating itself.