Enough Cuts: it’s time to invest

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Corporation for Public Broadcasting logo.
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Conversations about proposed funding cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and recent incidents with leadership, including high-profile resignations has brought a surprising amount of attention to PBS and NPR, the television and radio components of the Corporation.  One of the central topics is whether or not the organization could survive any funding cut (not to mention the entire zeroing-out proposed in the House).  On a recent episode of the Diane Rehm Show, one caller even suggested the CPB should “cut the umbilical cord,” apparently suggesting that the CPB is an overfed baby that needs to live on its own.

What is lost in these discussions is something profoundly American: that we actually ought to support innovation and excellence.

A sterling example of this can be found in the lightning pace of internet expansion.  The United States can rightly take credit for the development of the internet (thanks in large part to government funding), the development of internet technology, and the spread of portable internet usage.  Unfortunately, after pioneering broadband, in just a few years, the U.S. is now sitting in the basement of the industrialized world with some of the lowest access to broadband anywhere.  How did this happen?  We arrogantly assumed the so-called “invisible hand” would magically bring broadband into every house without any investment on our part.  In other words, we allowed the big telecom companies to determine the entire fate of broadband for the country.  At the same time, the rest of the world raced to get its citizens broadband access as if it were a utility; so broadband swept the globe faster than any of us could imagine, while leaving the U.S. looking like a nation of luddites.

For me, what is profound about this example is not that we could be so arrogant as to believe that public investment would not be necessary, but that we have so convinced ourselves about the magic elves that guide the market that we cannot even hear the nature of our problems.  The rest of the world is streaming from their bedrooms and 75% of Americans go to Starbucks or libraries because Comcast charges $60 per month.

The market can’t solve the internet access issue any more than it can serve the CPB.  As it is, NPR is one of the few news outlets in the West that is actually growing.  It is adding bureaus and reporters while the rest of the journalism establishment keeps cutting more and more every year.

We don’t have to believe that the Market is full of magic fairy dust and run by a paternal god-figure making everyone happy that does right by the market.  We can say that we need good news that we can trust that isn’t in the market so that they can be honest about the market.  We can say that we want broadband everywhere—it doesn’t have to be driven by the market.  The “information superhighway” from the 1990s never came to be because we let it become a toll road with speed inhibitors keeping us at 45 mph.  That was the work of those little gremlins in the mythical Marketland.

Let’s actually invest in innovation and excellence.  Enough cutting.