Although it debuted before my time, so to speak, I have fond memories of watching “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” as a young child discovering the wonders of television in the living room of our tiny Orlando apartment.
Later on, I loved the “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” as much as any growing boy whose first formidable doses of testosterone were being pumped into his blood.
But “in my younger and more formidable years,” as Nick Carraway put it, I was constantly glued to “Mister Rogers” and “Sesame Street” — learning to speak and read English, think critically, and most importantly, learning the importance of love and caring for others.
In 1969, President Nixon sought to cut a federal grant to PBS by 50 percent. In response, the late Fred Rogers, the creator and host of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” gave an impassioned testimony in front of Congress in defense of federal funding for PBS:
“I give an expression of care, every day to each child to help him realize that he is unique. I end the program by saying, ‘You’ve made this day a special day by just your being you. There’s no person in the world like you, and I like you just the way you are.’ I feel that if we and public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service for mental health.”
With his speech, Mr. Rogers outlined the primary difference between public broadcasting, which aims only to provide a public service, and for-profit broadcasting, which aims only to, well, turn a profit. This isn’t to say that all private media are evil. But it’s essential to understand their motives.
For-profit broadcasters don’t care whether our children are learning.
They don’t care if our children are developing their reading or math skills. They only care if our children increase their ratings by staying tuned in. They ensure this by lulling our youth into a zombie-like stupor resulting from the bewildering idiocy radiating from the teen sitcoms aired on the Disney Channel or the reality television aired on MTV.
The reason I bring all this up, as you might imagine, is because of Mitt Romney’s profoundly foolish comments about PBS at last week’s presidential debate, during which he took advantage of former “PBS NewsHour” anchor Jim Lehrer’s presence as moderator to target PBS and Big Bird as recipients of big-government subsidies that must be put on the chopping block:
“I’m sorry, Jim, I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I’m going to stop other things. I like PBS, I love Big Bird. Actually like you, too. But I’m not going to — I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for. That’s number one.”
First of all, the government doesn’t directly fund PBS. It directly funds the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, created in 1968, before PBS existed, after support for public media was noted “of appropriate and important concern” to the country (for all the reasons I just mentioned). The CPB, in turn, supports PBS.
Secondly, funding for PBS from the CPB accounted for only 12 percent of PBS’s revenue in 2010, as they mainly rely on private donors and grants.
Third, and most importantly, federal funding for CPB amounts to less than one one-hundredth of 1 percent of the budget!
At a time when the United States spends more on the military than the next 13 nations combined and sweeping tax cuts are gift wrapped with shiny bows for millionaires and billionaires, how can anyone suggest cutting an important public service — especially for children — that amounts to 0.01 percent of the budget as a deficit-reduction measure and keep a straight face?
Come to think of it, Romney’s s--t-eating grin was pretty creepy ...
Moisés Reyes is a graduate student in journalism in UF. His column appears on Fridays.
