My proposal is for a television or radio show to be produced to summarize what is happening in the halls of our government. This could be three different programs, one for each branch of government or it could be three segments of one program, but it would, in essence be a news program that focuses entirely on the events of the day (or week) in Congressional hearings, Executive branch meetings and announcements and Judicial branch announcements. There should be an emphasis on providing sufficient background for public consumption and for presenting all sides of important issues.
To ensure independence of this operation, I suggest that the government form and endow a financially independent foundation to produce such a show. The shows themselves should be published on the internet for anyone to download and they should also be broadcast on radio and television, such as on PBS or CSPAN. An extended text version of each broadcast (like a newspaper) and a web-site for public discussion should be provided as well.
Comments (6)
CSPAN and PBS are now corporate owned. No public service here. No public action groups allowed a voice. Only pro-war and terrorists fear mongers allowed to speak and lie.
Corporate owned? That's news to me. They are subject to corporate influence, certainly, and this was intentional, but it is quite different from corporate ownership.
Back in the heyday of Newt Gingrich, there was a lot of talk about forcing PBS to be more responsible and get off the public dole. By now, the Newt argued, they should be able to get private (i.e., corporate) funding and stop raiding the taxpayer's purse. Of course when they started getting corporate dollars they stopped having the appropriate independence.
This is precisely why I suggested that this new venture be funded through a foundation, not through annual budget allocations the way PBS is funded. Tax dollars can be cut by latter-day Newt's to wrestle the government news service into corporate or government servitude.
I would not object to similar foundation funding for PBS and/or CSPAN. In fact I think it would be a good idea. However, it would be a subject for a separate proposal and off-topic here.
I'd prefer a blog and twitter feed, personally. Video programs are costly to make and time-consuming to watch. The government shouldn't rely on press releases and media to communicate with citizens, but for accountability's sake a citizen's watchdog group inside the government should post on official government websites what's actually happening in various meetings and offices.
For my own purposes, I mostly agree with bradley.will. However, there are a great many people who still depend on radio and television for news. I would add that even in my own case, I get quite a lot of my information from radio programs that I download on the internet and listen to on an mp3 player. There is quite a lot of good radio programming that somehow never makes it to my local stations; even if it did it would be at the wrong time for me.
Information on the internet depends on original news sources, generally newspaper articles, but sometimes magazines, radio or television. These traditional media are not adequate any longer, due to corporate takeover. We need some new sources and the government could step up to provide some quality information for us to discuss on the internet.
I'm concerned that this would become political in that one party or other would try take over. Rather than the government endowing yet another program, how about it recognizes a non-partisan, non-profit group to do the job? I've not seen a non-partisan non-profit yet either though. There's merit here, but this needs more brainstorming.
Perhaps I am mis-informed, but I'm really not aware of any program that our government has endowed. The government initiates programs and funds them from year to year, but the only program I can think of that has multi-year funding is Social Security, and that funding was created for the stated purpose of preparing for a population bubble and with the intent that the Social Security trust fund would be exhausted and disappear after the baby-boom generation dies.
The purpose of an endowment is to provide permanent funding that future politicians cannot revoke and to thereby insulate it from political pressure. People will always be subject to political pressure, however, so no system will be perfect. That doesn't mean we should not try.