public television journalism

Development

The forerunner of public television news in the United States was radio programming carried on stations operated mainly by public universities. By the mid-1920s, radio had become an important pipeline of information to farmers, businesses, and citizens in rural areas, providing a model for early educational television. Progressive educators such as John Dewey recognized the enormous potential of broadcasting as a distributor of news and information and as a public space for the exchange of ideas and opinions vital to deliberative democracy. Nonetheless, the United States opted for a marketplace model of broadcasting. As commercial media established their dominance of radio broadcasting, news was largely eclipsed by entertainment, a pattern that was repeated with the advent of television in the mid-20th century.

In 1952, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allocated space on the broadcast band for noncommercial television channels. However, due to Cold War fears of Communist infiltration of media, noncommercial television was narrowly cast as educational. Still, some early educational television stations experimented with community news and discussions aimed at promoting social and civic reform. One example was a series produced in 1952 by WOI-TV which was licensed to the Iowa State University. The Whole Town is Talking, a 15-part series funded by the Ford Foundation, featured local citizens discussing current issues in communities throughout Iowa.

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The Ford Foundation played a crucial role in funding news programs for early educational television, particularly with the creation of National Educational Television (NET) in 1963. NET was a consolidation of several Ford Foundation projects that focused on media and education. The first regular public affairs program funded by NET for distribution to educational television stations was At Issue, produced by Alvin Perlmutter. NET also sought to address the concern that the mass media in the United States were focusing only on white audiences, a criticism highlighted by a presidential commission appointed to investigate race riots in the 1960s. By funding public affairs programs produced by and for minorities, NET showcased one of the potential strengths of public television news is its capacity to serve marginalized audiences rather than to maximize audience share.

Carnegie Commission Report

In 1967, the government-endorsed Carnegie Commission of New York released a report of its 2-year study of noncommercial television. The report, titled Public Television, a Program for Action, outlined a series of recommendations that included news and public affairs programming. Lawmakers enacted most of the commission’s proposals into law as the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. The centerpiece of the law was the creation of the CPB, a nonprofit corporation charged with receiving and disbursing government funds in support of public television. However, Congress rejected the report’s recommendation to create a permanent source of CPB funds through excise taxes and opted instead to allocate funding to the CPB through the budgetary process. Consequently, federal funding for public broadcasting, which has steadily decreased since the 1980s, remains subject to shifts in the political climate.

Local News

Because of the prohibitive expense, most public television stations do not produce daily hard news programs. In lieu of conventional newscasts, many stations produce public affairs programs, interview shows, or themed call-ins that connect viewers by telephone or the Internet with expert studio guests. Two series—Newsroom and The 51st State—are commonly considered landmarks in public television local news.

KQED-TV in San Francisco was the first public television station in the United States to produce a daily news show. Newspaper of the Air debuted in 1968 in response to a strike that closed San Francisco’s two major metropolitan newspapers. The program featured journalists hired off the picket lines to report and discuss local stories. Newspaper of the Air was so popular with San Francisco citizens that when the 9-week newspaper strike ended, the Ford Foundation provided a grant to continue the program in a revised format. The new daily program, Newsroom, provided in-depth, local coverage of the fractious 1968 presidential campaign, the antiwar movement, and civil rights protests, receiving the prestigious Alfred I. duPont Columbia University Award for television journalism for its local coverage.

The 51st State was a nightly production of New York’s WNET-TV from 1972 to 1973 and a weekly series from 1973 to 1976. The program reported on regional issues such as youth gangs in the South Bronx while also providing New Yorkers perspectives on national concerns including the Vietnam War. Rejecting the fast pace and headline quality of network news, The 51st State adopted unconventional broadcast techniques such as allowing the story content to dictate its length and bringing viewers into the studio to question experts and government officials.

National Public Affairs Center for Television (NPACT)

Unlike in most other countries, public broadcasting in the United States does not have a centralized news department. Rather, news is produced by individual member stations for distribution nationwide. The first effort at national public television news occurred in 1971 when the Ford Foundation and the CPB established the NPACT. The center was charged with producing news programming and documentaries for the recently established PBS, the nonprofit corporation collectively owned by member stations throughout the United States. It later merged with Washington, D.C.’s public television station WETA-TV.

NPACT s early efforts included Washington Week in Review, which was established in 1967 and continued to air on public television stations half a century later using the shortened program name Washington Week. In 1972, NPACT began producing a weekly campaign year series for PBS, coanchored by Robert MacNeil and Sander Vanocur. A Public Affair/Election 72 provided the template for what became the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. Filled with interviews and studio discussions with visiting experts, A Public Affair operated on the principle that news should be delivered as unadorned as possible to prevent distortion or trivialization.

In the early 1970s, A Public Affair, along with other news programs and documentaries on public television, provoked the administration of President Richard Nixon, which accused PBS of having a liberal/leftist agenda. Concerns about the perceived liberal bias of PBS triggered the development of broad journalistic standards for public television news, which according to the CPB’s Macy, included balanced programming, objectivity, reflection of voices both inside and outside society’s existing consensus, and the obligation not to let technique become the master of substance (Macy 1974, 71). To implement the guidelines, PBS appointed Jim Lehrer, KERA’s Newsroom anchor in Dallas, as its public affairs coordinator. Lehrer also became a correspondent for NPACT, and in 1973 he teamed up with MacNeil to provide live, continuous coverage of the Senate Select Committee on Watergate.

NPACT’s decision to provide gavel to gavel coverage of the Watergate hearings marked a watershed for public television news. While commercial television provided excerpts of the hearings in nightly news broadcasts, PBS preempted its daytime shows to carry more than 200 hours of hearings. Its Watergate coverage attracted a larger audience in many markets than the networks prime time reporting. PBS’s Watergate broadcasts are widely credited with creating a surge in both viewer interest in and funding for public television news. Nonetheless, the Nixon administration’s assault on PBS had weakened its news programming. In 1972, a CPB board, dominated by Nixon appointees, voted against funding news and political analysis and rescinded a funding commitment to NPACT. With the exception of Washington Week in Review, NPACT programming perceived as hostile to the Nixon administration went off the air once its funding was exhausted.

National Daily News

No daily newscast appeared on the PBS national schedule until 1975 when WNET-TV premiered a 30-minute weeknight program, The Robert MacNeil Report. Jim Lehrer served as the program’s Washington correspondent. In 1976, the program was renamed The MacNeil/Lehrer Report. Similar in format to Newsroom, the Report devoted each episode to a single issue. That changed in 1983 when the program expanded to a full hour under the title, MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, now PBS NewsHour.

In its expanded format, the NewsHour pioneered a new approach to nightly newscasts. Its opening segment provided a summary of national and international events. In-depth reports and interviews then provided additional context to news summary stories or introduced conflicting viewpoints. By limiting feature segments to just two or three per program, the NewsHour could devote significant attention to a limited number of topics. Pre-taped feature segments were produced by the NewsHour’s own staff, by affiliated public television stations, and by producers from Independent Television News, a news content provider headquartered in Great Britain.

Confounding doubts that Americans would watch a full hour of nightly news, the NewsHour became one of the most popular and iconic series on PBS. The NewsHour continues to experiment with different types of segments. For example, in presidential election years, it airs extended excerpts of primary candidates stump speeches on the premise that most citizens hear only sound bites and advertisements. The NewsHour also introduced weekly debates between conservative and liberal commentators.

Another periodic segment that began in the aftermath of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq is Honor Roll in which the NewsHour silently displays the pictures and lists the names, ranks, and hometowns of U.S. military members killed in Iraq. In 2006, Honor Roll expanded to include military personnel killed in Afghanistan. With the retirement of MacNeil and Lehrer, the program became PBS NewsHour. As of 2020, it remained the flagship news broadcast on American public television where it was carried by more than 350 stations and available to 99 percent of American viewers.

Other News Programming

Over the years, public television stations have experimented with a variety of formats designed to engage viewers in current events and promote an active, informed citizenry. The Public Broadcasting Laboratory (PBL), produced from 1967 to 1969, was an innovative and controversial series that tested the limits of public television broadcasting. The first series to be aired over a nationally interconnected network of public television stations, PBL was a magazine-style program that aimed to simulate a national dialogue by weaving together video and interview segments from around the country. In one of the program’s most controversial segments, PBL producers gave a camera to Russell Meeks, a radical African American poet, who chronicled life in Chicago public housing while condemning Martin Luther King Jr.’s strategy of nonviolence. The program drew condemnation for its subjectivity and incitement to violence. It was also praised for exposing a wide segment of the American population to the often invisible world of poor urban Blacks and for permitting a marginalized voice to tell his story in his own words. In many ways, PBL is considered the archetype for the magazine news programs that followed such as CBS’s 60 Minutes.

In 1968, the CPB funded a news program for African Americans. Black Journal used interviews, documentary productions, surveys, and editorials to examine political, social, and economic issues that were relevant to the African American community. In 1970, Tony Brown, a journalist from WTVS, the public television station in Detroit, became the executive producer. Brown took a special interest in media issues, encouraging African Americans to become involved in broadcasting to counter the racism he perceived in public television.

When the CPB withdrew funding for the program in the 1973–1974 season, the outcry from the Black community forced the CPB to reconsider. Nonetheless, Brown was frustrated with the CPB’s tepid support. In 1977, he changed the program s name to Tony Brown’s Journal and moved it to commercial television. In 1982, he returned to public television where his Journal aired until 2008, becoming one of the longest running public affairs programs on PBS.

Journalist Bill Moyers hosted several public affairs series on public television beginning in 1971, including Bill Moyers Journal, This Week, NOW, Wide Angle, and Moyers Company, as well as one-time specials and mini-series. He was especially noted for his investigative documentaries and long-form conversations with prominent people seldom seen on television, such as social and cultural critics Noam Chomsky and Cornel West. Moyers frequently used his PBS platform to critique government, corporate, and journalistic shortcomings. His progressive views made him a favorite target for conservative media watchdog groups such as the Committee on Media Integrity (COMINT).

Moyers’s critics often cited his reports, which they perceived to be one-sided, as examples of why the government should not fund public broadcasting. However, many regular public television viewers considered him to be a political and cultural figure of authority, and his work has been honored with numerous journalism and public service awards. When Moyers retired from public broadcasting in 2015, he created BillMoyers.com, a website where he archives the news and public affairs programs he created over a 44-year career in public television journalism.

PBS’s premier documentary series is FRONTLINE, an investigative program that began in 1983. It was created, in part, to fill the void left when commercial network news divisions gradually eliminated their own documentary series in the 1970s and 1980s and gravitated toward feature-filled and entertainment-oriented magazine programs.

FRONTLINE is unusual among public television news programs for at least two reasons. It has never been anchored by a single broadcast journalist or personality. Rather, it has featured both well-known journalists such as Garry Wills, Seymour Hersh, and Bill Moyers along with little-known independent reporters and filmmakers. Also, FRONTLINE is not supported by corporate underwriting. Its funding comes from the CPB, PBS, and PBS member stations. Perennially one of PBS s top-rated programs, FRONTLINE frequently generates press reviews and has won every major award in broadcast journalism. Given the nature of its content, it also incites controversy and is often cited as an example of the purported liberal bias of PBS.

Problems of Public Television News

Critics of public television news take issue with both its style and substance. Some believe that the deliberative pace and lack of stimulating visuals do not appeal to younger generations of news viewers. Others consider public television’s approach to news to be pedagogic and elitist. A third critique is the failure of public television news to reflect minority viewpoints and marginalized voices as articulated by the Carnegie Commission Report. The most fundamental critique of public television news stems from PBS’s lack of a long-term, insulated source of funding and the consequent perceived ideological biases that result from dependence on various funding agencies. Nixon alleged that a leftist bias in public television reflected the ethos of the liberal Ford Foundation which funded many of the early news and public affairs programs. Other critics see a rightward trend with the addition of conservative commentators to PBS news programming.

The growing reliance on corporate underwriting has raised concerns about the ability of public television news reporters to practice independent and impartial journalism. Business corporations, brokerage firms, insurance companies, and corporate-supported think tanks have underwritten prominent business news programs such as the Nightly Business Report (A.G. Edwards Sons, Inc.), Adam Smith’s Money World (Metropolitan Life), Wall Street Week With Louis Rukeyser (Prudential-Bache Securities), William F. Buckley Jr.’s Firing Line (American Enterprise Institute), and The McLaughlin Group (General Electric). An additional fear provoked by corporate influence is that to attract the large audiences that underwriters seek public television news will increasingly become more entertainment-oriented and less of a distinct alternative to commercial news.

Beginning with the advent of cable television and against the rapidly evolving media landscape of the 21st century, public television news has been forced to defend its existence. Critics question the need for federally funded news programs, arguing that a wide range of news and opinions from various sources are available via the Internet and multiple cable channel options. Nonetheless, efforts by several Republican presidential administrations to eliminate federal funding for the CPB have been stymied by Congress.

Public Television Journalism in the 21st Century

Public media stations are locally owned and operated. Therefore, they have taken a prominent role in efforts to counteract the impact of media deserts. These are the growing number of communities that have no local news coverage because of the rapid disappearance of newspapers that have gone out of business or merged since 2004 when about 9,000 were being published in the United States. The CPB’s primary strategy for maintaining public media’s reputation for serious, high-quality journalism has been to encourage collaborations among local stations through pooled coverage of regional events and other efficiencies.

Through its financial support for editorial staff and enterprise reporters, the CPB has fostered partnerships that have connected more than 100 public media stations in 42 states. One example was a collaboration among stations in the Ohio Valley that produced coverage of the opioid crisis in Appalachia. In 2019, PBS’s FRONTLINE announced the selection of five reporting teams from stations throughout the country that will make up the inaugural partners in the Local Journalism Initiative. The resulting projects will be published both locally and through FRONTLINE’s PBS digital and broadcast platforms.

News on Public Access Television

In addition to PBS, cable television offers another forum for public television news community access channels. These are also known by the acronym PEG for the three types of users: the public, education, and government. Although the channels are owned by for-profit cable companies they generally carry no advertising, and they provide local citizens a platform for the distribution of their own noncommercial messages.

PEG channels emerged in the 1970s. The broadcast industry, fearing a loss of audiences and revenues, maintained that cable posed a threat to free television. The cable television industry touted community access channels to demonstrate its social responsibility as a content provider. Cable operators argued that these channels enabled them to be more responsive than commercial broadcast networks to the issues and concerns of local communities. In 1972, the FCC required all cable systems with more than 3,500 subscribers to set aside three noncommercial access channels for public, educational, and governmental use. The development of these channels has been uneven, with programs that range from static shots of school board meetings to lively and highly produced series that examine controversial political, social, and cultural issues. The series Alternative Views, which aired on public access television in Austin, Texas, between 1978 and 1998, has been cited as a model for public access news programming. An interview show, Alternative Views addressed issues ignored by the mainstream media.

Public television has also experimented with community access projects. For example, in 1971, Boston’s WGBH Foundation created Catch 44, a nightly 30-minute program that invited any local group to air its views. Participants were encouraged to use the latest portable equipment to create programming. Although other stations initially followed Boston’s lead, community access projects did not become a significant source of public television news.