Cadence

Brother Bill Moyers, a man who should be declared a national treasure, has a wonderful piece on why public broadcasting can't simply be replaced by 400 channels of commercial television. It has a historical perspective that few but geezers remember first-hand (honestly--how many of you knew that public television got its birth certificate when television was barely a decade old?). Excerpt:

The bill passed. When he signed it, the President said that the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 "announces to the world that our nation wants more than just material wealth; our nation wants more than 'a chicken in every pot.' We in America have an appetite for excellence, too…At its best, public television would help make our nation a replica of the old Greek marketplace, where public affairs took place in view of all its citizens." He got it. Even a man hardened and compromised by the dog-eat-dog, knock-down-drag-out backroom brawls of hardball politics knew that a vigorous artistic, cultural, and intellectual forum is important to the health of democracy. So he said at the signing, "Today we rededicate a part of the airwaves - which belong to all the people - and we dedicate them for the enlightenment of all the people."

And he not only tells the story most of us have forgotten--the story of how people once dreamed that we could get news, learning, and even entertainment that wasn't completely whored out to commercial interests, and that this would be a good thing--he manages to tell it with a rhetorical signature, an ear for the well constructed phrase, that's largely missing from public discourse today:

It's right in our own PBS guidelines. Go to Paragraph F, under headline "Courage and Controversy."

You will read there: "The ultimate task of weighing and judging information and viewpoints is, in a free and open society, the task of the audience."

You will read there the pledge we have made as public broadcasters to seek "content that provides courageous and responsible treatment of issues, and that reports and comments, with honesty and candor, on social, political and economic tensions, disagreements and divisions."

You will read there the promise that our "overall content will offer a broad range of opinions and points of view, including those from outside society's existing consensus" - those from outside society's existing consensus.

We couldn't ask for a clearer statement of our mission.

We couldn't find a more affirmative reason for being.

We couldn't want a more resounding call to action.

I read those guidelines from time to time when I grow faint of heart, or my knees turn weak, or my resolve falters after I've been attacked by people who don't like us - people representing power, privilege, or ideology who despise any journalist who shatters the silence. Reading them, I realize again how corporate media pollutes the meaning of "fair and balanced" with the pretense that two well-rehearsed sound bites by representatives of self-serving interests constitutes "analysis" of the news.

I believe in "fair and balanced."

I say let's be more fair than anyone else. Let's be as fair to Main Street as we are to Wall Street - to the working men and women of America as we are to the big corporations, big government, and big investors.

Let's be as fair to poor families as we are to the First Family and the Royal Family (Yes, I looked up one evening, as more deaths were occurring in Iraq, more suffering was being endured on the Gulf Coast, and more Americans were losing their healthcare, and there on my public television screen was a special on "The Royals and their Pets.")

Let's be as fair to the skeptic of official policy as we are to its spokesman, as fair to the commoner as to the celebrity, and as fair to the lived experience of ordinary people as we are to the calculated opinion of think tank experts.

I'm for balance.

Let's balance the spin with the evidence, the rhetoric with the record, and opinion with reporting.

It's a little thing we like to call cadence.

(Cross-posted at Preemptive Karma.)