IS PUBLIC BROADCASTING BELIEVABLE?

Conservatives believe that public broadcasting is biased.

Progressives (that is, liberals) believe public broadcasting speaks the truth in the face of heresy.

Listening to public broadcasting with an open mind is the way to assay the worth of those news media. In this piece, public broadcasting will be referred to as PB, with no distinction made between NPR, PBS and other broadcast outlets.

First, staff questions to guests and news sources should not be judged as automatically prejudicial. In the early, radio days of “Meet the Press” listeners were advised that the questions did not necessarily reflect the views of the questioner. They were only meant to illicit information. Would that such an attitude were understood and practiced today by both broadcast and print journalism and opinion purveyors. When listening to and viewing PB outlets one cannot always be sure that fundamental to good news gathering is being practiced. Fairness demands that the questioners being given the benefit of the doubt, unless over the length of the program evidence shows otherwise.

Second, call-in listeners are more prone to be up-front with their feelings. If preponderance appears to be on one side of an issue, it can be assumed that the call screener has been instructed to put only certain callers on the air, or to make sure most display the desired stance. Of course, PB listeners and viewers tend to be of a type, although generalities can be misleading.

Third, the guest is not necessarily wisdom incarnate. He or she might have been chosen because of current notoriety of because of a certain reputation. Certainly, the more controversial the more likely the questioning will be focused tightly. Also, the more controversial, the more likely any pre-judging will surface.

A neutral assessor must strive to fairly apply those three provisos. Because PB as a whole is the subject here, individual programs can be only antidotal. Examples thus are called for, but those who choose examples are almost always intent upon making a point. That is true for all forms of discussion, debate, and argument. Reasoning wants particulars to be knitted into generally acceptable arguments. Preliminary premises must be true to reach truthful conclusions. The art of logic has taken on the correctness of mathematics to reach for conviction. The precision of the syllogism is marvelous to behold and to enfold. But can criticism – in the best sense of that word – of PB be expressed in a syllogism? And, how does the assessor of content leave his own prejudices behind?

Newspaper editors have recognized these problems of good reporting for a long time. And, indeed, early editors made no attempt to be even handed, preferring to adopt a cause and publish whatever seemed to advance their positions on politics and on civics and on society.

An early conclusion might very well be that fairly judging the political leanings of PB is like judging those of a particular newspaper or news organization. Newspapers have clearly labeled opinion pieces, whether on the editorial page, the op-ed page or in columns. So the outside judge has to confine assessments to the news pages. The divisions are not so clear in PB, for opinion is not so clearly delineated.

Neutrality on the part of the assessor is paramount.

Even a truly neutral assessor upon expressing his conclusion would have a hard time convincing his audience of the truth outlined. His would be an opinion to be accepted, rejected or given a mixed grade. No single assessor of any public institution is going to be awarded the title of unassailable truth-giver. (Even a pope fails to get the respect of every Catholic.) Voters cannot be expected to collect all facts and select the officeholders best for country and local jurisdiction. Voters can ­– not always – be the target for public broadcasters that would like to influence the outcome of elections. Same for newspapers.

Let’s face it, not many of us are neutral. We need opinions. One cannot act without opinion.

Even if PB could be pinned as liberal or conservative what difference would it make? As long as audience members use its programming to form their own opinions . . . that is what counts.

A person who tries to keep informed by reading and listening and watching a spectrum of news and opinion sources might very well fail to find a single source that meets his ideal purveyor of facts. What he will find is that there usually is one -- maybe two -- source for every major story. After that, come the variations and emendations and interpretations that jam the various news and opinion media. The persnickety news user will masticate his grazing and arrive at a conclusion. It is to be hoped that sincere grazing and thoughtful mastication produces something to slake the public’s thirst for useful knowledge of public events.

In short, public broadcasting is just another source of news and opinion to be judged by the thoughtful listener and viewer.