Sybil, who knows I’m a fan of PBS’s Frontline, sent me this zinger from Salon’s “Pushing PBS to the right” (subscription):
“It’s designed to get people’s attention and warn them not to do programming that will be questioned,” says David Fanning, executive producer of “Frontline,” PBS’s award-winning investigative series. “We ask hard questions to people in power. That’s anathema to some people in Washington these days.”
Read Lapin’s “Attacking Liberal Bias,” and enjoy tonight’s Frontline, “The New Asylums,” while you can. More:
There are nearly half a million mentally ill people serving time in America’s prisons and jails. As sheriffs and prison wardens become the unexpected and ill-equipped gatekeepers of this burgeoning population, they raise a troubling new concern: are jails and prisons America’s new asylums? With exclusive and unprecedented access to prison therapy sessions, mental health treatment meetings, crisis wards, and prison disciplinary tribunals, FRONTLINE goes deep inside Ohio’s state prison system to present a searing exploration of the complex and growing topic of mental health behind bars and a moving portrait of the individuals at the center of this issue.
This web site will be available on Tuesday, May 10th at 9pm eastern time.
The Frontline tonight is one hour in length. Check your local PBS station for date and time.
And I’m going to watch “House” tonight at 9PM on Fox. I love that show. Hugh Laurie is terrific as the cranky doctor.
With the appointment, (by the repubs), of Ken Tomlinson as head of Public Broadcasting, PBS and NPR are now under a direct and sustained assault by censorious wingnuts to destroy whatever independency they might have once enjoyed as far as programming and investigative disclosure is concerned. Tomlinson is busy bringing in other rightwing hacks as faux-ombudsmen and such, but as Jonathan Chait points out here, as long as PBS/NPR are dependenton Fed funding, their troubles will only escalate.
I have some problems with Chait’s argument here; notably, he seems a bit cavalier about public broadcasting moving over into the cable tv/radio format. I have no doubts they would do quite well in the “for profit” arena, but my concern is that all those folks without cable, (often because they simply can’t afford it), would be deprived of this very valuable public service should they go the cable route.
Nevertheless, Chait’s article is quite thought provoking.
There’s a lot of discussion on the media today in
the blogs. MediaChannel is discussing the Media
Reform conference in St. Louis where there’s a strong
urge to support Indy media in view of the failure of
the MSM.
I wonder if the media really failed us or if
there was a take-over by the right wing, leaving
reporters powerless. The right already have control
of PBS although it looks like they will have a fight
on their hands.