{"id":607703,"date":"2024-02-07T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-07T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/to-save-local-journalism-update-the-public-broadcasting-act\/"},"modified":"2024-02-07T17:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-02-07T14:00:00","slug":"to-save-local-journalism-update-the-public-broadcasting-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/to-save-local-journalism-update-the-public-broadcasting-act\/","title":{"rendered":"#To save local journalism, update the Public Broadcasting Act"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/02\/OP_PublicRadio_020724.png?w=900\" \/><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>            <iframe title=\"Audio Article\" id=\"instaread_iframe\" name=\"instaread_playlist\" scrolling=\"no\" allow=\"autoplay\" style=\"display:block\" width=\"100%\" height=\"100%\" frameborder=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>During his time as the U.S. ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/oll.libertyfund.org\/title\/jefferson-the-works-vol-5-correspondence-1786-1789\">wrote<\/a> that if he faced a choice between \u201ca government without <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/news\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"2\" title=\"News\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">news<\/a>papers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Jefferson would be dis<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>ointed with today\u2019s trends. Increasingly, we are seeing government without newspapers, especially at the local level, where they are vital in informing the citizenry.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"ad-unit ad-unit--mr1_ab\"><\/aside>\n<p>Some 2,900 newspapers have closed since 2005. According to just-released numbers by the <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/localnewsinitiative.northwestern.edu\/projects\/state-of-local-news\/2023\/\">State of Local News Project the Northwestern University\u2019s Medill School of Journalism<\/a>, \u00a0an additional 2.5 of the remaining 6,000 close each week. <\/p>\n<p>The term \u201cnews desert\u201d has become both commonplace and accurate. <\/p>\n<p>Concern about the business model and quality of local journalism is mounting. Most recently, this came in the form of fears from the staff of the Baltimore Sun that its new owners, David Smith and Armstrong Willliams, would turn what was once H.L. Mencken\u2019s paper into combination of Fox News and a local \u201cif-it-bleeds-it-leads\u201d organ. On the other hand, Baltimore might be lucky to have any newsgathering at all. <\/p>\n<p>This makes it important to recognize and assist the growing number of oases in the midst of these deserts \u2014 the news gathering of public radio stations. <\/p>\n<p>In a role not anticipated by the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act \u2014 which added radio to its charge only at the last legislative minute \u2014 public radio has emerged as a major source of local news, at least in major metro areas. From WNYC in New York to KPCC in Los Angeles, from WBUR and WGBH in Boston to WBEZ in Chicago, public radio has gone from reading the news to hiring staffs of reporters. NPR reports that 393 local stations employ 3,000 journalists (including reporters, managers and talk show hosts). Fifty employ more than 15 journalists each. Eight of these stations, including WAMU in Washington, reach more than 400,000 listeners weekly. <\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s more these non-profit news organizations go far beyond radio to maintain robust online \u201cnewspapers.\u201d They produce videos as well, and their pages blur the lines between print, radio and television. Indeed, many produce popular podcasts, the advent of which can be traced to public radio. In Chicago, the local public radio station actually purchased and merged with a major newspaper.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"ad-unit ad-unit--mr2_ab\"><\/aside>\n<p>All Things Considered alone attracts some 11.9 million listeners weekly, compared to fewer than a million households who tune in each night to its television counterpart, the PBS News Hour (which often includes interviews with NPR correspondents). <\/p>\n<p>For public radio journalism to continue to flourish \u2014 and expand to more of the nearly 1,000 public broadcasting license holders across the country \u2014 the legislation that created public broadcasting in the first place needs a crucial update. <\/p>\n<p>A section of that law requires that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes some $574 million in federal support to the public <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/social-mediaa\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"1\" title=\"Social Media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">media<\/a> system, devote \u201c75 percent of such amounts\u2026for distribution among the licensees and permittees of public television stations.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"ad-unit ad-unit--mr3_ab\"><\/aside>\n<p>For 2024, that meant $383 million for television, compared to $128 million for radio. The emphasis on television may have made sense in 1967, when there were still just three major television networks and radio seemed a dying medium. But it no longer makes sense now, as public television struggles to find a role among an abundance of creative streaming services, whereas public radio has eagerly embraced local journalism. Federal support, in other words, should be agnostic about which medium a licensee employs to distribute news and information.<\/p>\n<p>This is especially true because public radio stations, after a a 44 percent increase in reporter hiring between 2011 and 2020, have more recently been forced to cut back their newsroom investments, putting the growth of these news-desert oases at risk.\u00a0According to the <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/journalism\/fact-sheet\/public-broadcasting\/\">Pew Research Center,<\/a> \u201cProgram and production expenses for the 129 news-oriented local public radio licensees was $480.2 million in 2021, compared with $539.4 million in 2020.\u201d They are in need of a greater share of federal support, at a time when we are in greater need of local journalism.<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, the support for television continues an operations mission that has already overtaken by <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/technology\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"4\" title=\"Technology\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">technology<\/a>. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is mandated to support free over-the-air broadcasts, whereas both public television and public radio programming are now available \u201cover the top\u201d on smartphones. If broadcast was crucial in 1967, it is broadband access that is crucial today. <\/p>\n<aside class=\"ad-unit ad-unit--mr4_ab\"><\/aside>\n<p>So far, the Biden administration has not acted to change this status quo. It is as if the government, through CPB, were intent on building new train tracks, just as air <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/trip-and-travel\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"10\" title=\"Trip &amp; Travel\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">travel<\/a> was taking off. <\/p>\n<p>It is time to move on.<\/p>\n<p>This is not to say that public radio cannot do better.\u00a0Whether because of story selection or other factors, it does not reach a broad cross-section of the American public. Indeed, <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/journalism\/2014\/10\/21\/political-polarization-media-habits\/\">the Pew Research Foundation<\/a> reports that \u201cconsistent liberals are more than twice as likely as web-using adults overall to name NPR (13 percent versus 5 percent)\u2026as their top source for political news.\u201d Moreover, it is largely in \u201cblue cities\u201d on the East and West coasts, where public radio local journalism is most robust and popular. \u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"ad-unit ad-unit--mr5_ab\"><\/aside>\n<p>Media enterprises are, of course, free to cultivate specific audiences (see Fox News) \u2014 but not necessarily at the taxpayers\u2019 expense. NPR and its local affiliates should strive to reach a far wider audience \u2014 geographically, politically and culturally \u2014 in order to demonstrate that it continues to deserve its subsidy.<\/p>\n<p>Conservatives might be reluctant to do anything that expands public radio. What they need to understand is that more support for public radio stations can mean more local journalism in smaller cities and towns, and in red states \u2014 and thus more political diversity as a simple function of covering what\u2019s going on in them. <\/p>\n<p>It is also important to understand that federal support does not cover anywhere near the full expenses of local operations. Licensees must rely on the financial backing of local audiences. That\u2019s one reason public radio moved toward local newsgathering in the first place. If local news leans too far in one political direction, there is a risk of losing audience support. In other words, public broadcasting is not immune from a market test.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"ad-unit ad-unit--mr6_ab\"><\/aside>\n<p>It has been 56 years since Lyndon Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act, which has gone virtually unchanged in the interim. It is long past time that it were brought into the contemporary media era to help news deserts bloom.<\/p>\n<p><em>Howard Husock, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, served as member of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting from 2013-2018. His work for WGBH-TV, public broadcasting, Boston, won a National News and Documentary Emmy Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Coverage of the Disadvantaged. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMN63nwsw68G3Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more News articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/news\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">News category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/opinion\/congress-blog\/4450905-to-save-local-journalism-update-the-public-broadcasting-act\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During his time as the U.S. ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson wrote that if he faced a choice between \u201ca government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.\u201d Jefferson would be disappointed with today\u2019s trends. Increasingly, we are seeing government without newspapers, especially at the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":607704,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thehill.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/02\/OP_PublicRadio_020724.png?w=1280","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[134343,134418,134353,73798,134661,90482,33487,4947,148591,148592,148593,111069],"class_list":["post-607703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-campaign","tag-congress-blog","tag-court-battles","tag-defense","tag-energy-environment","tag-house","tag-immigration","tag-opinion","tag-public-broadcasting","tag-public-radio","tag-public-television","tag-thomas-jefferson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/607704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}