Public broadcasting: Luxury or staple?

Public broadcasting fans have a lot more to worry about than the embarrassing tape, released this week, of a National Public Radio executive criticizing Tea Party activists, evangelical Christians and Republicans.

Critics of the federal government's $460 million a year outlay to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) — which contributes to NPR and PBS — call the expenditure an unneeded luxury at a time when most households are awash in media. NPR CEO Vivian Schiller resigned Wednesday amid the political fallout surrounding the tape. But supporters of public media say it's important to have programming that isn't beholden to advertising. No audio service "comes close to NPR news," says Patricia Aufderheide, director of American University's Center for Social Media. PBS treats kids "not as little consumers but as responsible members of the community." The effort to defund CPB "is in defiance of public opinion, not in support of it," says Alex Jones, director of Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. Some critics say the programming frequently found on PBS and NPR stations is more expensive than, but not much different from, options on C-SPAN, CNN, A&E, HBO and webcasts. Former CPB president W. Kenneth Ferree says a docudrama on the History Channel costs about a fifth as much to produce as one on PBS station WGBH. "But is the one on WGBH five times better? Probably not." Mark Meckler, national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots, says the purpose of funding public media once "was to provide another voice. But there's a cacophony of voices on the radio and on the Internet today.''