tend to be more opposed to the death penalty than the general
population. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of private wealth and
corporate power backing the American Civil Liberties Union.
Since those are aspects of the social order from which they gain,
they tend to support them. By these criteria, the people who
dominate the country tend to be liberal, and that reflects itself in an
institution like PBS.
You’ve been on NPR just twice in 23 years, and on The MacNeil-
Lehrer News Hour once in its almost 20 years. What if you’d been
on MacNeil-Lehrer ten times? Would it make a difference?
Not a lot. By the way, I’m not quite sure of those numbers; my
own memory isn’t that precise. I’ve been on local PBS stations in
particular towns.
I’m talking about the national network.
Then probably something roughly like those numbers is correct.
But it wouldn’t make a lot of difference.
In fact, in my view, if the managers of the propaganda system
were more intelligent, they’d allow more leeway to real dissidents
and critics. That would give the impression of broader debate and
discussion and hence would have a legitimizing function, but it still
wouldn’t make much of a dent, given the overwhelming weight of
propaganda on the other side. By the way, that propaganda system
includes not just how issues are framed in news stories but also how
they’re presented in entertainment programming—that huge area of
the media that’s simply devoted to diverting people and making them
more stupid and passive.
That’s not to say I’m against opening up these media a bit, but I
would think it would have a limited effect. What you need is
something that presents every day, in a clear and comprehensive
fashion, a different picture of the world, one that reflects the
concerns and interests of ordinary people, and that takes something
like the point of view with regard to democracy and participation
that you find in people like Jefferson or Dewey.
Where that happens—and it has happened, even in modern
societies—it has effects. In England, for example, you did have major