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     Senate hearing on federal funding for public broadcasting hears about
    political pressure and CPB /station disputes
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The second day of the Senate communications subcommittee hearings on federal funding for public broadcasting took place today one of the lead off witnesses before subcommittee chairman John Pastore he was William Hartley president of the National Association of educational broadcasters German past story asked Hartley what essentially is the trouble in public broadcasting. Could you answer that. Harley answered the dream of the Carnegie Commission has not been fulfilled as anticipated that is to say it was understood that in order to provide independence from possible political pressure they would have to be established an independent corporation which would funnel the funds through to the stations and that along with that they would have to be some way of segregating funds in such a way that the support for this enterprise would not be subject to an appropriation. We have not been able to do that and we are now having some of the repercussions I think that result in the fact that we were not able to establish a true heat shield to protect this edifies from the
possibility of pressures. It's new it's struggling to get started it hasn't had a long time to get its feet on the ground it's a brand new enterprise under the sun. Of course there are because of the problems and difficulties. There are some differences in philosophy I think that have emerged. Essentially what is going on I think is a conflict in the concern about whether this is to be centrally controlled. Or whether the the control of this operation rests with the stations that everyone gives lip service to localism. But I must confess that I see some contradictions in assertions that have come from spokesman for the administration who say that it is becoming over centralized and it ought to be more localized. And yet there have been moves in the in the recent months which suggest a assertion of authority by the corporation board of exerting even greater central control. So
essentially this is the difficulty. We are very confident however as the Corporation spokesman indicated yesterday that we can work out these difficulties. We are I think very close to an agreement. In fact we hope that we will be able to announce before too on an entente cordiale between the licensees and the corporation board. Obviously there are problems to be worked out but we are working at it very assiduously. We think that we can manage this within the industry without resorting to changes in legislation. Others who testified today were Dean Birch chairman of the Federal Communications Commission in Hartford Gunn president of the Public Broadcasting Service. Both of them supported the pastoring Magnussen bill that provides for two year funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Ralph Rogers chairman of the coordinating committee governing board of the public television licensees then testified on the crucial question of control and scheduling of the television interconnection quote freedom of the in the connection.
And this meant simply that the licensees felt that the programs which the licensees desired and which could be made available from many sources could be delivered to the licensees over the end of connection with out restraint or censorship. This would not have been a difficult point to settle were it not for the fact that the corporation is charged under the law to be certain that programs or series of programs of a controversial nature must be objective and balanced. It is readily understood that there could be an honest differences of opinion between reasonable man on the subject of whether a program or a series of programs met the legal requirement of objectivity and balance this difficult problem has been resolved by an agreement between the board of the corporation and the licensees by arranging to create a monitoring committee free of whom would be selected by the cooperation three of whom would be selected by the licensees to
deal with programs where it was alleged that a program or series of programs might in fact violate the law. On the question of objectivity and balance the solution I arrived at was that if four of these six qualified persons agree that the program or programs were in violation of the law that they would have the right to forbid these programs being transmitted over the end of connection. This solution seems to all of us to be a sound one and we shall proceed under that agreement.
Series
MPR News Feature
Episode
Senate hearing on federal funding for public broadcasting hears about political pressure and CPB /station disputes
Contributing Organization
Minnesota Public Radio (St. Paul, Minnesota)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/43-jh3cz32j59
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Description
Description
One of the first witnesses on the second day of Senate Communication subcommittee hearings on federal funding for public broadcasting was William Harley, president of the National Association of Educational broadcasters. Chairman Pastore asked him what essentially is the trouble in public broadcasting, Harley answers: The dream of the Carnegie Commission has not been fulfilled as anticipated, In order to be independent from possible political pressure there would have to be established an independent corporation to funnel the funds to the stations, and keep the funds from being subject to annual appropriation. We have not been able to do that and are now having some repercussions. We could not establish a true heat shield to protect this enterprise from the possibility of pressures. It's new, it's struggling to get started, of course there will be problems and difficulties, differences in philosophies. What's going on is a conflict over whether to be centrally controlled or if control rests with the stations.
Genres
News
News Report
Topics
News
Film and Television
News
Politics and Government
Subjects
Politics : 11000000-:Federal regulatory policy and organizations : 11022000; Politics : 11000000-:Congress : 11009000-:Senate : 11009001; Economy, Business and Finance : 04000000-:Media : 04010000-:Television industry : 04010010
Rights
Unspecified (Content status: Edited program); Unspecified (Created or licensed from third party: Don't know); Unspecified (Any explicit usage restrictions: Don't know); Unspecified (Any distribution restrictions: Yes); Unspecified (Created by station only: Don't know); Unspecified (Is part of content in public domain: No); Unspecified (Produced or funded by third party: Don't know)
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:04:54
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Credits
Release Agent: Minnesota Public Radio
Speaker: Rogers, Ralph
Speaker: Harley, William
AAPB Contributor Holdings
KSJN-FM (Minnesota Public Radio)
Identifier: file_metadata_10369915 (MPR File Name)
Format: audio/vnd.wave
Duration: 0:04:54
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Citations
Chicago: “MPR News Feature; Senate hearing on federal funding for public broadcasting hears about political pressure and CPB /station disputes ,” Minnesota Public Radio, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-43-jh3cz32j59.
MLA: “MPR News Feature; Senate hearing on federal funding for public broadcasting hears about political pressure and CPB /station disputes .” Minnesota Public Radio, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-43-jh3cz32j59>.
APA: MPR News Feature; Senate hearing on federal funding for public broadcasting hears about political pressure and CPB /station disputes . Boston, MA: Minnesota Public Radio, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-43-jh3cz32j59