Political Discourse and the “New PBS”

Abstract

Having survived efforts by political conservatives to eliminate federal funding for public broadcasting, public television in the United States remade itself as a market-savvy media enterprise in the mid-1990s. This “new PBS” sought to develop new revenue streams and forge new financial partnerships at the same time that public broadcasting found renewed political support on Capitol Hill. In this climate, this study examines the sources and subjects on public television’s public affairs lineup, exploring how public television measures up to the lofty goal of contributing to public life by providing a diverse alternative to commercial broadcasting. Based on a two-week sample of the eighteen most widely distributed public affairs programs on public television, findings indicate that the vast majority of stories focused on either the economy or domestic politics, while coverage of international issues was comparatively small. More than three-quarters of on-camera sources were corporate representatives, government officials, or professionals (mostly journalists), with infrequent appearances by members of the general public and citizen activists. More generally, analysis of sources and qualitative case studies of the most prominent stories in the sample—the 1998 congressional hearings on impeachment and the intertwined coverage of antitrust policy, corporate mergers, and corporate layoffs—suggest that political and economic coverage on public television focuses largely on the views and activities of insiders and routinely emphasizes the strategic dimensions of the political world. The study concludes with a discussion of the similarities between public affairs programs on public and commercial television.