Recommendation 2

THE COMMISSION RECOMMENDS:

Increase support for public service media aimed at meeting community information needs.

Like private media, public broadcasting in the United States has a mixed history of providing local news and information. On the one hand, a 2007 Roper opinion poll found that nearly half of all Americans trust the Public Broadcasting Service “a great deal,” higher than the numbers rating commercial television and newspapers.³⁵ On the other hand, with some notable exceptions, public broadcasting in America has been widely criticized as being insufficiently local or diverse. Public stations do not have a strong record of spearheading local investigative journalism, and most public radio broadcasters have little or no local news reporting staff. Finally, again with some promising exceptions, local public stations have failed to embrace digital innovations as a way to better connect with their communities.³⁶

The American commitment to First Amendment values has long bred an appropriate caution against reliance on government as a sponsor of news and information. But public broadcasters in the United States have demonstrated their capacity to deliver high-quality, fair, and credible news and information programming free of government interference.

Public broadcasting in the United States has added a context and fullness to news and information during the past 40 years. But it has fallen short of its promise. Breakthroughs in children’s programming have not been mirrored in the information field. Simply put, our public media do not fully reflect the public nor engage with it sufficiently on the community level.

It is important now for public policy in the digital age to play a more determined role in enhancing the performance of public broadcasting in local news.

Public broadcasting needs to move quickly toward a broader vision of public service media, one that is more local, more inclusive, and more interactive. This means pursuing greater integration of new technologies and communication practices with traditional forms of broadcasting. It means using digital platforms to engage local institutions effectively in the public sphere. To advance this, government as well as private sector donors should condition their support of public media on its reform. They should support the creating, curating, and archiving of public media content on the community level.

The Commission agrees with the recent conclusion of American University’s Center for Social Media that “[w]hat is needed for the future of high-quality [public media] content is at least partial taxpayer support for the many existing operations and for innovative new projects.”³⁷ Other countries with similar commitments to freedom of speech and of the press make much larger per capita contributions to the financing of public media. The United States federal government, for example, spends $1.35 per capita for public media, as compared to $22.48 per capita in Canada and $80.36 per capita in England.³⁸ A modest increase in tax-supported revenues would not compromise the American model of combined government seed money and local contributions, and it would recognize that seeding local public media makes sense in the digital age. Accordingly, Congress should increase the funding available for the transformation and localization of America’s public media.

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