revealing. Although they contained some new information, for the
most part they simply confirmed w hat w as already available in the
public record. T he Times’ w illingness to publish them, three years
after the main centers of American pow er had decided the w ar
should be ended, w asn’t exactly an act of enormous heroism.
Because the government is giving less funding to public radio and
T V, they’re being forced more and more to turn to corporate
funding.
Public radio and T V have alw ays been very marginal enterprises.
As Bob McChesney describes, there w as a struggle back in the
1920s and 1930s over w hether radio should be in the public arena or
handed over to private pow er. You know w hich side w on. W hen
television came along, there w asn’t even much of a debate—it w as
just given to business.
Both times this w as done in the name of democracy! It tells you
w hat a strange intellectual culture this is—w e take the media out of
the hands of the public, give them to private tyrannies, and call it
democracy.
Over time, this attitude has solidified. T he 1996
Telecommunications Act w as the biggest giveaw ay of public assets
in history. Even token payments w eren’t required.
McChesney makes the interesting and important point that this
w asn’t treated as a social and political issue—you read about it in the
business pages, not on the front page. T he issue of whether w e
should give aw ay these public resources to private pow er w asn’t
disc ussed— just how w e should give them aw ay. T hat w as a
tremendous propaganda victory.
Public radio and television are permitted around the fringes,
partly because the commercial media w ere criticized for not
fulfilling the public-interest duties required of them by law. So they
said, Let the public stations take care of that. Let them run Hamlet.
Now , even that marginal function is being narrow ed.
T his doesn’t necessarily mean the death of public radio and
television, by the w ay. Back in the Middle Ages, the arts w ere
supported almost entirely by benevolent autocrats like the Medicis;
maybe today’s benevolent autocrats w ill do the same. After all,
they’re the ones w ho support the operas and symphonies.