The Making of a Movement: Getting Serious About Media Reform                                               
January 7-14, 2002
No one should be surprised by the polls showing that close to 90 percent of Americans are satisfied with the performance of their selected President, or that close to 80 percent of the citizenry applaud his Administration's seat-of-the-pants management of an undeclared war. After all, most American's get their information from media that have pledged to give the American people only the President's side of the story.
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  WQEX in Play in Pittsburgh                                              
December 31, 2001
Pittsburgh is home to a bitter, long-running battle to decide the fate of one of its two public-TV stations. WQED(TV) Pittsburgh has been fighting for half a decade to spin off WQEX(TV) channel 16, the weaker of its two stations, to buyers offering enough cash to shore up the finances of the flagship.
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  Don't Touch That Dial                                               
November 25, 2001
As the FCC weighs WQED's bogus arguments for commercializing WQEX, supporters of vibrant public television must speak up, warn Paul R. Flora and Mike Schneider.
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  Saint Preserve Us                                            
November 14-21, 2001
A local struggle is emerging that concerns class, television and, possibly, divine intervention.
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  Plan Keeps WQEX-TV In Public Domain                                                
November 8, 2001
A Pittsburgh community group insists this region can support two public television stations, and on November 7th, it presented a plan to make it happen. For five years, Pittsburgh Educational Television has opposed WQED-TV's efforts to sell its other station, WQEX, a move that would require federal approval to change WQEX's license designation from educational to commercial.                                                
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  Advocacy Group Unveils Plan To Operate WQEX
November 7, 2001
At a press conference held on November 7th, Pittsburgh Educational Television will unveil a proposed business plan for the operation of WQEX, Channel 16. Since WQED Pittsburgh first announced plans to sell WQED in 1996 -- and later began airing one lineup on both public-TV stations -- PET and associated groups have attempted to retain, and, ideally, control, an independent Channel 16.
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  WAVELENGTHS - Public Radio, Private Pressures
October 24, 2001
A report that WBUR Radio (90.9FM) and National Public Radio have been targeted by corporate underwriters for their alleged anti-Israeli bias underscores a little-understood fact: so-called public radio today is, in many respects, public in name only.                                   
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Critics of Pubcasting Meet to Practice Tough Love
July 3, 2000
High hopes were entertained and criticisms leveled during "Public Broadcasting and the Public Interest," a conference at the University of Maine in Orono, June 15-17. Scholars who admire the field's ideals accused of falling short, and painted a picture of commercialism and compromise that some pubcasters practitioners found a far cry from their reality. With funding from the Florence and John Schumann Foundation, the event assembled a far-flung group of about a hundred. Most were academics, including keynote speaker Robert McChesney, a media critic and historian; William Hoynes, a professor at Vassar College and critic of PBS; and Jerold Starr, head of the advocacy group Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting (CIPB). About 20 community broadcasters and a smaller number of staff members from CPB-funded stations rounded out the mix. Papers from the conference will be made into a book.
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Will Senate Loosen Definition of Educational
July 3, 2000
Public broadcasters are ramping up efforts to secure support of their position in the Senate after the House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation that could force the FCC to permit religious broadcasters to use reserved noncommercial educational channels without determining whether they carry educational programs or not. The Coalition to Defend Educational Broadcasting, organized by the Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting, argues that the bill obliterates the requirement that broadcasting on these reserved noncommercial educational (NCE) channels must serve the public interest. Concerned that passage of the legislation will open the gateways for religious groups to dominate these licenses and "bring an end to educational programming as we know it," groups like the Alliance for Community Media, People for the American Way, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, Interfaith Alliance, National PTA and the Department of Professional Employees of the AFL-CIO have joined together to lobby against the bill. They are meeting with senators and hoping to curb any further action on the legislation or a similar bill, S. 2215, authored by Sen. Tim Hutchinson (R-Ark.) which would keep reserved channels open for any purpose allowed for nonprofits under the tax laws.
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Putting the PUBLIC Back into Public Broadcasting
May 18, 2000
Jerold Starr first took up the cause of public broadcasting in the early 1990s, when the public-television foundation in his hometown of Pittsburgh, some $14 million in debt, proposed selling one of its two stations. Starr, a sociology professor at West Virginia University, mobilized grassroots support to save the station, registering some 40,000 calls, letters, and petition signatures. STARR: "[PBS] programming is driven primarily need to please [corporate] sponsors. There clearly has been a significant retreat into... programming designed not to offend anybody."
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