----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I want to appologize in part to Larry Jarvick. Part of our problem here is that delay in getting things back on line puts my original post out of context. It is clear now that you are willing to debate the proposition and I am appreciating, though not agreeing, with you spelling out your position. As I tried to suggest in my post, I have strong ambiguities here. I do not think PBS has a consistently liberal bias; it seems to me muddled at best and has shown itself to be cowardly in its treetment of TALES OF THE CITY for instance. I do think that the arguments to promote it are elitist if the programming itself isn't. I do not think the case can be made that it is significantly better than popular television. I find it middle-brow at best. I do think the limited amount of funding it takes is a drop in the bucket in terms of the federal budget and is a worthy expendature of my tax dollars. I would rather see my money go to that than corporate subsaidies, agriculture-oriented give-aways, much of the national defense budget, etc., though I doubt that these programs will suffer the same kinds of cuts from the New Congress. I do think it is an example of where government-private partnership is working, as some of the democratic representatives were arguing at the hearings, and my understanding is that the effects of the cuts would be more significant than conservatives suggest because much of it is used for seedmoney to attract matching grants and without it, projects would be much harder to initiate. I don't buy the suggestion that people CHOOSE not to subscribe to cable. I'm sure some of them make that choice: my in-laws for instance. Many more, however, choose not to get cable in order to pay rent (as I had to choose for a number of years) or to buy food (as my brother and his wife have to choose, in order to support their families without going on wellfare.) Larry's comments about how the panel was composed is helpful. I think it points to a basic problem in how congressional hearings operate. Everything is allocated according to sides with only two possible sides on most questions and certain key groups chosen to determine who represents their sides. I have no quarell with the idea that the critics of PBS should have been given equal time in this context nor with Larry for making his research known on this point. I just think that this is an area where media scholars might have made a meaningful contribution to public policy but their views were not sought out by the committee independently of the specific advocacy groups for PBS. This makes the whole thing a political show, rather than an investigation that might lead to constructive public policy. I suppose I feel in the end that some changes in PBS's policies would be beneficial: I would agree that BARNEY and company should pay their share; I would like to see the sallaries made public since they are made at taxpayers expenses and should be public record. (Of the people I know who work at PBS, most are grossly underpaid and overworked, so I suspect it would be in their best interest to dispell some of the claims being made about their fat-cat status.) I would like to see PBS forced to confront its elitist rhetoric and justify its claims to be better television, 'cause I agree with Larry that I don't tend to teach PBS shows in my TV class, I don't tend to watch that many of them myself, and as the AMERICAN CINEMA discussions suggest, I am not sure they are doing their job in terms of taking risks and allowing alternative viewpoints to be heard. (Unlike Larry, however, I would see part of the selling-out of recent PBS decisions to be directly linked to the move towards privitization and do not think it will produce better quality programs.) But, having agreed to those criticisms, I think PBS needs to be there and needs to be supported, at the cost of roughly one dollar per citizen, by the government. In the end, I am not convinced by the limited government argument for several reasons. First, I don't see an effort to consistently limit government and I think PBS has become a focus for purely ideological reasons. When Bob Dole will vote to cut grain subsidies and Newt Gingrinch will go after Peanut payoffs, then I may start to take some of these claims seriously. Second, I would see the function of government to deal with problems which are national in scope and which individuals are unable to deal with themselves. In my opinion, PBS falls into that category. Let me close by again retract my personal comments about Jarvik. We should spend less time here questioning each others motives and more time focusing on the central issues. I frankly admire Jarvik for being willing to publically take a conservative stance on this issue within a Media Studies community which is so heavily liberal/radical in its politics. I always value and respect healthy debate with thoughtful conservatives and know some who feel silenced by the prevailing climate at SCS and elsewhere. (I recognize, of course, in making that statement I risk having my own left-of-center credentials called into question.) -- Henry Jenkins p.s. I would make a distinction, by the way, between "advocacy" in the classroom and "advocacy" in a public forum. We would probably disagree on what is appropriate in both spaces. But, it seems to me that the nature of this space certainly allows for "political adovocacy" as well as intellectual discussion since we are speaking here as individual citizens, part of a virtual community, and not as authority figures in a classroom setting. I don't think posts to a net should be judged by the same kinds of standards of scholarship as academic articles and so I don't see the point that Jarvik was originally making against the discussion here.