The Fight Over PBS Should Be to Broaden Its Scope, Not to Threaten It

[Commentary] If Big Bird were on the ballot on Election Day, he’d probably win in a landslide. But in our closely divided partisan election cycle, public broadcasting has once again become a sign of divided government.

Sadly, in all the joking and sloganeering, what has gotten lost is a key opportunity to talk about what America really needs: a more expansive public media service. By injecting public broadcasting into the 2012 campaign, politicians have brought into view just how paltry a sum the federal Treasury provides to public television and radio stations. The 2012 budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the principal source of federal dollars for public media, was just $445-million, roughly 0.01 percent of the federal budget. Adding a little more to it would hardly cause significant deficit pain. It is time for our political leaders to give public outlets the resources it takes to satisfy the news and information needs of communities. And it’s time for public broadcasters to pledge that they will never try to shore up their financial position by taking on the corrupting influence of political contributions on behalf of the least trusted crop of politicians in our nation’s history.

[Stehle is executive director of Media Impact Funders, an organization of grant makers that was formerly called Grantmakers in Film and Electronic Media]