Corporate greed triumphs over patient need
How they took the care out of our health care system
Also in this issue
- Victory in the sweatshops
- Congress reaches out to families
- Casualties of war
- Bogging down in colombia
- Put the "public" back in pbs
What the hell's happening here? Why is my bank in the tank? And my house and job? And my retirement money? Even my state's teetering on the brink of broke! Who did this to us? Fair questions, but we're not getting honest answers. 
Put the "public" back in pbs
Whatever happened to the "public" in PBS, the Public Broadcasting System? The original mandate for this public network was to offer programming different from the commercial networks, and specifically to "provide a voice for groups that may otherwise be unheard." Professor William Hoynes of Vassar College has done an independent analysis of PBS programming, viewing all the news shows, interview shows, business, and documentary programs for a two-week period. His findings are stunning.
Consider the coverage of politics. Like every other network, half of PBS's sources were the same old establishment politicians and government officials, a third were journalists, and 11% were corporate executives, lobbyists or PR flaks. Consumer, environmental, or labor sources were almost invisible.
How about PBS's coverage of economics? Fully 75% of the voices on the air were from the corporate world. Most of the others were from academics or government. Labor was only 1.5% of the total, consumer advocates were less than half of 1%, and the general public less than 2%.
Prof. Hoynes' study is on the Web site of Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (www.fair.org).